


the haunting of harrenhal

by ganymede_elegy



Series: scary stories to tell in the dark [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, F/M, Ghosthunters - Freeform, Ghosts, Haunting, Minor Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Minor Gilly/Samwell Tarly, Minor Meera Reed/Bran Stark, angst and nonsense, it's spooky season y'all, jon owns a haunted inn, sansa has a ghost hunting show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 54,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganymede_elegy/pseuds/ganymede_elegy
Summary: She tries not to think of a house in the woods, of the ghost she left behind there, standing in his kitchen with the imprint of his lips on hers. She shouldn't have kissed back, not when she knew that she was going to put that interview on the internet for everyone to see (but she did, and now she has to spend her nights thinking about it, and him, about the way he felt against her and the look of regret on his face when she pushed him away and the pained 'sorry' he'd said as she ran away).or, Sansa has a ghost hunting show and Jon is a skeptic who owns a haunted hotel and who is maybe starting to believe after seeing the ghost of his dead girlfriend.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: scary stories to tell in the dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911424
Comments: 628
Kudos: 450





	1. in which Sansa sees a ghost (just not the kind she was hoping for)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of my series that I should call "I just really like ghosts, ok?". You should definitely read the first part first or things probably won't make sense.

If she has to listen to The Rains of Castamere one more time, she might lose her mind.

She had watched cranky old Mr. Frey get up and put another quarter in the jukebox and queue up the song _again_ and Sansa swears it's like he has some personal vendetta against her. Marillion's voice croons from the jukebox and she doesn't understand why Mr. Frey loves this song so much. It's old and depressing and should never be played, period, let alone five times in a row.

She's wiping down a table that a group of students have just vacated. The diner is nearly empty at this time of day, nearing three in the afternoon, too late for lunch, too early for dinner. She'll likely spend the next hour watching sugar pour from the refill container into the shakers on the tables.

She sits in one of the booths as she does this, chin propped up on her hand, watching the sugar pour down like sand and she lets her mind wander. She tries to think of nothing in particular (she tries not to think of a house in the woods, she tries not to think of the ghost she left behind there, standing in his kitchen with the imprint of his lips on hers).

The door to the diner bursts opens, the bell clanging loudly, and shakes her out of her thoughts and she's surprised to see Bran. He looks around and finds her quickly, coming over and sliding into the booth opposite her, the vinyl creaking as he sits.

“You weren't answering your phone,” he says, slightly out of breath and his eyes shining.

“It's in my locker,” she tells him. He knows she doesn't keep her phone on her at work. Ms Mordane, the owner, is old fashioned and gets angry when her employees are on their phones and Sansa would like to keep her job.

“We got an email. From a _studio_ ,” Bran breathes. “KLBC.”

“ _KLBC_?” Sansa asks, incredulous.

“Ok, well not the main channel, one of their affiliates,” Bran waves his hands like it's the same thing. “But still, they want us to come in and talk about doing a show with them. A _real show_ , Sansa!”

She can't tell what emotion she's feeling, but it isn't the excitement that's making Bran so twitchy. Perhaps apprehension? Regret?

“Sans, the sugar,” Bran reaches over and tips the refill container right side up and Sansa hadn't even noticed the granules spilling over the sides of the shaker. She curses and tries to scoop all the excess sugar from the table into a napkin. “We have a meeting on Thursday, you have to be there.”

She nods and gets up to throw the napkin away.

* * *

It was agreed long ago that any decision about the show has to be unanimous. They all get an equal vote.

Bran leads the way into the building and Sansa tries not to feel like she's about to throw up. Of the five of them, only Gendry looks even remotely nervous and she appreciates him for that. She's never seen Bran more excited, Meera is determined, and Arya goes along, cool and calm as anything.

They're lead to a conference room and two executives meet them. A man in his early thirties and a woman in her fifties and they make introductions and sit down around the much too large table, all glass and chrome.

The executives begin by bringing up the Harrenhal episode, which doesn't surprise anyone. It's their most watched video, she knows it's the reason they called. They talk a little about their show, the process, how they approach it. Sansa doesn't talk much, she lets Bran and Meera handle this. The executives nod and smile but she gets the impression they don't really care.

“Now, you mentioned that you got into this whole... ghost hunting business because of your parents?”

Sansa assumes Bran had mentioned this on the phone or something, because their parents and Robb aren't topics that come up on their show. They very specifically do not talk about them.

She feels her stomach sink when the female executive pulls out a folder and opens it and there, right in front of them, is a printout of a news article of the car crash. Sansa's vision narrows to that folder and she can see, peeking out from behind the article, a photo of her parents. Her mother's face stares back at her and she can't breathe (and she remembers with perfect clarity her mother standing in the kitchen, shuffling towards her, when she was actually dead on the side of the road halfway to White Harbor).

“We're thinking,” the man is saying, his words buzzing in her ear, “we do a séance. Try to contact your parents and brother, we can get actors and....”

Sansa stands up and leaves the room. She barely realizes she's doing it until she's back outside and when she gets to Gendry's SUV, she leans against it and she hears footsteps behind her. Arya and Bran have followed her out. Arya looks _furious_ , Sansa can see the rage on her face and Bran looks pale and like he's going to cry (Sansa can almost see his dreams cracking and breaking apart around him and she wants so desperately to hold them together, she wants to keep her brother away from reality, even if she knows it isn't possible).

“Fucking _cunts_ ,” Arya hisses and she slams her hand into the SUV door.

“Don't use that word,” Sansa says automatically. Arya always says what she thinks will be most shocking, it's something she's always done, but she'd been getting better recently. Until now.

After a few seconds of silence, the doors of the building open and Meera and Gendry come out. Gendry has Sansa's purse and she hadn't even realized she left it in there. He hands it to her silently and then goes over to where Arya is pacing and he stops her and puts a hand on either side of her face and rests his forehead against hers and Sansa watches her sister visibly relax (she has to look away, she shouldn't be intruding on their moment).

“So much for that,” Meera says and Sansa notices the grip she has on Bran's hand. “Let's go home and order pizza and eat so much that we want to puke.”

* * *

She's responding to comments, she tries to interact with their fans as much as possible. It falls to Sansa to do it because anytime Arya responds, it comes out sounding mean (Arya can't figure out written tone, even her texts sound bitchy and it's taken them all years to be able to parse them). Bran and Meera have schoolwork and Gendry barely knows how to work his phone, so Sansa handles their social media and interactions.

She loves it, honestly. The positive comments, the excitement, it hypes her up and makes her feel like what they're doing _means_ something. She tries not to let the hate comments get to her. The people who call her too tall or too pale or boring or snobby or stupid and naive. She tries to ignore them (but sometimes they eat at her and sometimes she gets self conscious in front of the camera).

She's gotten through Twitter and Instagram and now she's reading the comments on their latest YouTube video, a Q&A about their recent trip to the Oldtown lighthouse, when her phone rings.

“Hey,” she says, tucking her cell between her shoulder and ear and going back to typing.

“We got another,” Bran says and he sounds less enthusiastic this time. “WHC2.”

(She hates the wariness in his voice. She hates the world for being horrible.)

“Ok,” is all she says because she doesn't know what Bran _wants_ her to say.

“You ok to go to another meeting?”

She doesn't want to. Not really. She doesn't want some smug man in a suit bringing up their dead family again. She _likes_ their little production, just the five of them, but she knows it can't last. Bran and Meera want to _do things_ , this won't last forever. And if the Ghost Sisters ends, Sansa isn't sure what she'll do with her life.

Even if it doesn't end, they're not making enough money to fully support five adults, not with their travel and lodging and equipment and food expenses. They're just barely saving some money up for equipment with Sansa and Gendry's full time jobs. They still live with their grandparents, if they ever want to move out, they'll need something more. Maybe someday they'll get there, their audience is growing all the time, but they're still a niche interest.

“Yeah, I'm ok,” she says and Bran says he'll text her the details.

* * *

Tyrion Lannister is nothing like the other executives. He's the head of alternative programming at The Westerosi History Channel and he seems to take them seriously (or at least treat them with some semblance of respect, which is close enough). He tells them straight out that he thinks ghosts are nonsense, but he likes their dynamic and he wants to put them on TV.

There's a catch.

(Well, it's probably not a catch to the others, but it is to her. When Tyrion tells them his plans for their trial season, she feels herself get dizzy.)

Afterwards, they go to Sansa's diner and look over the paperwork. Bran and Meera are buzzing and even Arya seems excited. Gendry looks lost in thought, like he can't believe this is real.

Neither can she.

As their meal progresses, the four of them get more and more excited about the prospect until Sansa can't take it anymore and she has to bring up what _none_ of them are bringing up.

“He's not going to agree to it,” she says and they all pause and look at her. “He's not going to let us back after...”

She doesn't have to say it, they know.

“It'll be money for them,” Bran tries.

“I get the sense he doesn't care about money,” Meera points out.

“He can't be mad,” Bran doesn't sound convinced. “He didn't even _try_ to stop us from posting it.”

After that, their enthusiasm dies and they all eat in silence and Bran closes the folder on their paperwork and Sansa tries not to stare at the title on the front of it.

_The Haunting of Harrenhal._

* * *

She's only been able to watch _that_ episode once.

She remembers the interview, the look on his face, the anger and disappointment. The only parts they had cut out of the interview were Sansa talking about mom and dad and Robb, and Arya asking Jon if he'd killed anyone (though Bran only agreed to cut it because they weren't sure if there would be legal issues with The Watch). They left the rest in. They left his abrupt departure from the interview. They left his silences.

She thought about fighting it, but she never did and she can't figure out why. Bran had been so excited, he'd talked about nothing else on the ride back to Riverrun. Not their findings, just the interview. Just _him_.

She never told them what happened. She never told them that she'd gone to his home out in the woods and gave him a copy of their findings. She never told them about any of it. She's not even sure why she went that night, except that she had wanted to. She should have never gone, but there was something about him that called to her and she can't explain it.

Sometimes at night she thinks about the kiss and she feels guilt pull at her stomach (guilt for what, she's never sure. Guilt for pushing him away and leaving him there? Guilt for feeling more in those brief minutes than she had in three years with Willas?)

She knew they were never going to cut his interview. She'd known it when she went to his home. She'd known it when he kissed her. She'd known it when she kissed him back.

She shouldn't have gone there that night. She shouldn't have kissed back, not when she knew that she was going to put that interview on the internet for everyone to see (but she did, she _did,_ and now she has to spend her nights thinking about it, and him, about the way he felt against her and the look of regret on his face when she pushed him away and the pained _sorry_ he'd said as she ran away).

* * *

She agrees that they'll at least _try_.

They tell Tyrion about the issues with Harrenhal, why they might not be welcomed back on site. He offers to send someone to talk to the owners and Sansa cuts Bran off and quickly declines this. They all seem in agreement that if there's anything he'll like less than _them_ coming back to the inn, it's a network producer showing up out of the blue.

Bran decides they'll make the trip to Harrenhal this weekend. They won't give notice, they won't give him time to leave.

Jon Snow may not be a ghost, but they all know he will disappear the moment he knows they're coming.

They all pack into the rental van and head out. Gendry drives with Arya in the front seat. Sansa sits in the middle row and Bran and Meera take the third. They discuss strategy, the best way to get him to agree to this. Sansa feels the dread build in her with every passing minute. What if he brings up the kiss in front of the others? She can't imagine he would, if nothing else, Jon seems like an incredibly private person. But the idea of the five of them barging into his office makes her feel terrible, so the words come out of her mouth before she has a chance to stop them.

“I could talk to him.”

Arya's eyes meet hers in the rearview mirror and Bran tilts his head at her. She takes a deep breath to try and smooth out her panic before attempting to come up with a reasonable explanation.

“You know, do the whole flirty thing? It seemed to work last time.” Her voice sounds hoarse in her ears and she wonders if the others can hear it. “Plus, he'll probably be more receptive to one person than all five of us at once.”

“That's probably true,” Meera agrees with a nod. “I'd say either you or Arya.”

Arya frowns. “I'm not sure I'm the most persuasive. Sansa's probably the best choice.”

It's decided then, less than an hour away from their destination, and Sansa sits back to look at the scenery rolling by the window and she tries not to think too much about it or she'll give herself away.

* * *

The Harrenhal Inn hasn't changed.

It's been almost a year since they were last here. They'd filmed last summer and put the episode out on Halloween. KLBC and WHC2 hadn't contacted them for nearly half a year after that (old media is slower, Sansa finds. Their YouTube production is used to instant results and she's realized, even in the short time they've been talking to Tyrion Lannister, that they'll have to get used to the grinding pace of television production if they're going to do this.)

It's summer again and the heat is just as oppressive as it had been last year. She's grateful that this time, they aren't filming and she won't need to put on sweaters and boots and a hat just to make it seem like they were actually filming in the fall (the fall is just _spookier,_ Bran had explained once).

The leaves rustle in the slight breeze and there's birds chirping and it should be peaceful, but Sansa feels anything but calm.

Inside the lobby, the same girl from last time is behind the front desk and when she sees them, her mouth tips into a frown.

“Uh oh,” Arya sing-songs, keeping her voice low.

Bran pushes forward and asks the girl “three rooms?”

The girl doesn't even glance down at her reservation sheet when she says “would you look at that, we're all booked up.”

“You sure about that?” Bran asks at the same time as Sansa steps forward.

“Can I speak to Jon? Is he here?”

The girl behind the desk quirks an eyebrow at her. _Wynafryd_ her nametag reads.

“Haven't you done enough damage?” she directs at Sansa and Sansa feels her throat go dry.

“We just want to talk, if he wants to kick us out after, we'll go,” Meera steps in front of Sansa with her own eyebrow quirked.

“You know he had to take a leave of absence, right,” Wynafryd is frowning and if her anger weren't directed at them, Sansa would be impressed by her loyalty to Jon (for a sickening moment she wonders if they're dating, but she pushes that aside). “After all of it, people kept coming and bothering him. Someone broke into his _house_.”

“Wyn.”

The voice is steady and it comes from the right, back where the offices are. When they all turn, Jon's standing in the doorway of the office, arms folded over his chest and looking just as disheveled as he had when they'd been here last year, before Sansa had made him clean up his appearance.

  
“I'm handling it,” Wyn says fiercely and makes a shooing motion at him, like she wants him to go back into the office.

“We want to talk to you,” Arya says, ignoring Wyn and looking directly at Jon. “Give us ten minutes.”

He looks over their group and Sansa feels cold when his eyes sweep over her, like he barely sees her.

“Ten minutes?” he directs this at Arya and she nods back at him. There's a pause that's just slightly too long before he finally nods and goes back into his office, but he leaves the door open.

“Go!” Meera pushes at Sansa's shoulder and she is _absolutely_ regretting this.

“Maybe Arya should...” she tries, but Meera is guiding her to the office and Wynafryd looks conflicted and Bran looks hopeful and Arya has already turned to say something to Gendry and isn't paying attention and before she knows it, Sansa's standing at the threshold of the office.

Jon sits at his desk and looks up at her and if he's surprised it's just her, he doesn't show it. She moves to close the office door but what if that's _weird?_ She's halfway through shutting it when she decides open is better and she starts to push the door back open but then she sees everyone looking at her and she starts to shut it again and when it's almost closed she panics and finally she decides to leave the door cracked open a little. Closed enough that the others aren't staring in, but open enough for decency.

(There's a sudden realization that keeping the door open for decency is exactly what she'd had to do in _high school_ when Joffrey was over and she thinks that she should just be an adult and close the door properly but Jon has already watched her fumble with it enough, she's already made a fool of herself, so she keeps it slightly ajar.)

She sits in the chair with as much dignity as she can muster after the door fiasco. Jon doesn't say anything and she doesn't know what to say, either, any plans she'd had have flown right out of her brain. She reaches into her purse and pulls out the folder and places it on the desk, facing him. She watches him look down at the title.

_The Haunting of Harrenhal_

Jon doesn't open it and she's about to just get up and run out of the office, but then she thinks of Bran's hopeful face, Arya's excitement.

“They're offering us a deal,” she says and Jon's eyes raise to meet hers. “WHC2.”

“The history channel?”

She nods. “They want us to film a whole season here. Talk about the history of the Inn. Spend weeks gathering evidence.” She takes a deep breath before she gets to the real catch. “They want you.”

“Me.”

“They want us to take you ghost hunting. They want your reactions to it. You'll be paid, obviously.” This, she thinks, was the wrong thing to say. His eyes narrow and his jaw tics under his beard and he looks away from her. “I know you don't care about the money,” she tries to course correct.

“And if I don't agree?”

“If you don't agree to letting us film or if you don't agree to being in it?”

“Both. Either.”

She chews on her bottom lip, a bad habit (she used to chew gum when she was a kid, but she'd stopped because it's bad for your teeth. For a few months in college, she'd taken up smoking, but Willas's disapproving looks had stopped her. She tends to chew on the ends of her pens and sometimes her nails and when she has neither of those, she'll bite at her lip).

“If you don't agree to let us film here, we obviously don't have a show,” she says slowly. “If you don't agree to be in it? I don't know, honestly. We might be able to work around it.”

He doesn't speak for a while, his eyes are fixed on the wall behind her and it looks like he's very far away. She waits with baited breath until she can't stand it anymore.

“You don't have to answer now. Take some time and think about it. Read the file?”

Jon's eyes come back into focus and he's finally looking at her again. She stands to leave (if she leaves now, he hasn't said _no)_. She hikes her purse onto her shoulder and goes to the door and just before she opens it, she turns back to him.  
  


“Bran and Meera really want this. This is their _future_. I know you hate me, but think about it, for them. For Arya?”

She leaves the room before he can say anything and when she gets back to the lobby, the rest of them have managed to wrangle up a set of rooms to stay the night in. Sansa can't tell if she's happy about this or not.

* * *

That night she tosses and turns and wishes for a ghost but they never come and so she's left with her own thoughts (which is much scarier).

She wonders if she really wants this, to come back here. If she really wants to be on television. She wants Bran and Arya to be happy. She knows this will make Bran happy and she wonders about Arya. Arya enjoys what they do, but does _she_ want to be on TV? Or are they both just going along with Bran's vision? And what about Meera and Gendry? Meera wants this, but Gendry is a mechanic who only agreed to help them because he'd started dating Arya.

What she _does_ know is that she absolutely does not want to have go down and face Jon Snow tomorrow. She feels terrible for what she did and she's never been particularly good at facing up to her own mistakes. Should she say sorry? Pretend it never happened? Go all in and be unapologetic? She thinks she'll likely go with _pretending it never happened_ , the easiest route (she's a coward at heart).

She groans and presses her face deeper into the pillow and tries to clear her mind. She's going to need sleep if she's going to face the next day with any sort of dignity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been feeling fairly uninspired, but I've had this written for weeks now. I was going to wait until I had the whole story finished but I've got nothing... no idea on where to take this or motivation to write. So I figured I'd post it and see if that gives me any sort of inspiration.
> 
> This will be alternating POVs like the first part, so next up will be Jon.


	2. in which Jon negotiates a contract and thinks about flowers

He wants to pretend that he thinks about it. That he sits down and contemplates it, really works through all the scenarios and the pros and cons.

The truth is, he knows the minute she pulls out that folder that he'll say yes.

Maybe it's the bright blue eyes, the pink tint to her cheeks every time she looks at him, the way she chews on her bottom lip. Maybe it's the way she asks for his help for her brother and sister.

Or maybe, possibly, it's because he wants to _know._

* * *

Jon has never believed in ghosts.

He thinks maybe he did when he was a kid, scared at night that something was under his bed. Then later, after mom died and he moved to Dragonstone, watching horror movies late at night in his uncle's house, TV volume turned low so they didn't wake him up. But scary movies had quickly lost their appeal; real life was terrifying enough. Uncle Viserys was a monster that they had fled the minute they turned eighteen – Dany had gotten married and Jon had joined the Watch.

He sometimes wonders how Dany's doing. They'd tried to keep in touch after, meeting up whenever he had leave, but the spectre of Viserys always loomed over them. Full days together had turned into lunches had turned into grabbing coffee; every minute he spent with Dany reminded him of that house and he thinks it was the same for her. He thinks they were both relieved when he was sent on assignment and didn't get leave anymore, they could drop the pretense. He hasn't seen her in years (he thinks she has a child now, though he's not sure) and he thinks he's far enough removed from his childhood that he could bear to see her again, but at this point there's too much time and distance.

She's the only family he has left, though, after Viserys died. He hadn't wept and he hadn't gone to the funeral. He'd been deep undercover with the Wildlings and hadn't even learned about it until months later, after... well, _after_.

He remembers sending Dany flowers when he finally found out. Chrysanthemums. The florist told him they meant _joy._ She sent him back irises and when he looked it up, he found they meant _hope._ He remembers putting them in a vase in the lobby, right after they'd purchased Harrenhal. The whole place was still under construction then, old and broken and unlivable, the three of them wondering _why_ they'd dumped all their money into the place.

He'd kept them in the vase in the lobby long after they wilted.

* * *

For months after he saw Ygritte, he told himself he was just tired.

He'd been up for days, practically, working himself to the bone. He'd been exhausted and raw and seeing her in the doorway to his bedroom that night had just been a hallucination. A product of his over-tired mind.

But there's a doubt that lodged itself in the back of his mind that night and won't leave. He hates it. He used to be so sure in himself and his beliefs. Unwavering. He remembers staring at the little USB drive of evidence that Sansa had given him. He almost watched it.

Then the episode had aired and everything had gone to shit.

Calls started pouring in, requests for interviews. People showing up at the inn asking for him. The worst were the ones Edd had laughingly called _groupies_. Gilly preferred the term _fangirl_. He was fairly certain it was one of them that had broken into his little cottage one night while he'd been in town (when he'd yet again gone home with Val in a fit of loneliness). They'd taken nothing, but he'd had to replace the broken window.

Two weeks later, they'd had a surprise safety inspection from the county to look at his wiring and electrical work. It had passed inspection, but he knows the only reason they came was because of the show.

By December he was on edge. Nearly six months spent questioning everything he believed in and now extra unwanted attention. He'd nearly broken his leg while up in the attic and hadn't watched where he was stepping and had fallen through the ceiling into the storage room below. After that, Sam and Gilly had suggested he take a vacation (and by _suggested_ , he means Gilly booked him a flight to Dorne).

He'd never been to Dorne before and it turns out he hated it. Harrenhal was already hot enough in the summers, the same way Dragonstone had been. But it was December, and Dorne was _still_ hot. He's not made for the heat; he'd grown up in Last Hearth until he was twelve and then spent years in the Watch stationed even further north. He prefers the cold, though he does not miss the frigid nights spent in the Wildling camps, huddled around space heaters in abandoned houses (there's a lot of things he doesn't miss about his time with the Wildlings. There's a lot he does).

* * *

“What are you gonna do?” Gilly asks as she and Sam look through the folder.

“What are _we_ gonna do,” Jon corrects. “This place belongs to all of us.”

“Yeah, but we know you don't like...” Sam trails off, making a gesture towards the door. Jon's not exactly sure what specifically he means – Jon doesn't like ghosts? The increased attention from guests? No, he likes neither of them. “We can't subject you to more of that. Someone broke into your _house_.”

“Well, I have a guard dog now,” he jokes, but Sam doesn't seem amused. “Honestly, it was one time and I'm pretty certain it was one of those bachelorette party girls.”

The night of the break-in, a group of women had been staying at the inn, drunk and loud and demanding to meet him because they'd seen the Ghost Sisters episode. It had been funny at first (to everyone on staff who wasn't Jon) but as they got drunker, they got louder and bolder. Jon had left and gone into town, gone home with Val, and came home to a smashed window.

“They were the worst,” Gilly groans. In his playpen, Little Sam makes a noise that Jon chooses to think is agreement.

“And we can't deny we had the best winter season we've ever had,” he continues. It's the truth, the Ghost Sisters episode seems to have had more of an impact than any of the other shows that had come through. “If we had a full season of a TV show dedicated to this place? Who knows how well we'd do.”

“You know we don't care about money,” Sam says softly, closing the folder and leaning back in his chair.

“I do,” he says back and watches Sam and Gilly's eyes widen a bit. He looks over at Little Sam in his playpen and Sam and Gilly both turn as well. “I want him to have everything we didn't.”

Gilly stands up and walks over and picks up her son as Sam nods (Sam might have come from a wealthy family, but had been treated like shit and kicked out the minute he turned eighteen with no money and no place to go. He'd joined the Watch because it was the only place that would take him).

Sam and Gilly seem to accept his reasoning, and it's not completely a lie. Jon wants his godson to have _everything_. Two parents, an Uncle Jon who buys him cool shit, a steady home, a loving family. Money makes that easier. The people who say _money can't buy happiness_ clearly always had enough. So yes, he knows that doing the show will not only pay them in the short term with whatever deal the network gives them, but also in the long run with increased tourism, especially in the off-months.

He knows if it weren't for him, Sam and Gilly would agree to this in a heartbeat. He doesn't want to be the reason they say no. He wants what's best for the inn.

He doesn't tell them the real reason. The deep, dark, twisted curiosity that's been burrowing into his brain over the past year. He never told them about seeing Ygritte. He never told them about his doubt. He never told them about the nights he'd sit in the office, watching the sun go down, long after they went home, after Edd went home, after Mel took over. The nights he'd sit in here, playing a strange game of chicken with himself, _daring_ himself to go wander the halls in the still of the night. He'd never done it, he'd always given up and gone home, put the TV on as loud as he could with all the lights on and fallen asleep on the couch.

He's a coward at heart, he thinks.

But, _but_ , if he has a reason? If he's forced under contract to do it... He could pretend he doesn't care, that he doesn't believe.

No, not pretend. He _doesn't_ believe. Ygritte was a figment of his imagination, a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep and guilt for kissing another girl (for possibly _feeling_ something, in a way he never did with Val). He _doesn't_ believe and doing the show will prove he's right. He can debunk all of their findings. He'll see that it's all mundane or made up and he can go back to being sure about himself.

* * *

The next morning he finds them in the dining hall, sat at a table near the window, the same one they'd been at last year. It feels like deja vu as he walks over to them.

When he approaches their table, they all stop eating and stare at him, like he's a bomb about to go off.

He puts the folder on their table and they watch the movement with wide eyes but none of them talk (if he were a better man, he wouldn't take any enjoyment out of their apparent fear of him, but he does. He almost wants to laugh at how nervous they all are).

“I have conditions,” he says and Bran's eyes light up. From the side, he hears a sharp intake of breath from Sansa but he refuses to look at her. He needs to be firm here, he needs his demands to be met. What he doesn't need are wide eyes and shiny hair distracting him.

“Which are?” Bran is trying his best to hide his excitement, but it's not going well.

“I want to talk to this network guy, Tyrion?” Jon read the folder last night and remembers the name (how could he not remember the name _Lannister_? He used to watch all of Jaime Lannister's movies as a kid). “I want final say on anything that airs.”

His words hang over them. He knows it's a big ask. _Huge_. Maybe impossible. But he doesn't want what happened last year to happen again. Jon knows what he's like. He knows he isn't the best with people, or words, he knows how he comes off to the general population. He should've thought it through last year before he did the interview, but he'd been so sure in his beliefs that he thought they'd get nothing. After, he'd been so frustrated with himself that he hadn't been able to contact them and ask them to edit it to something less damning (not that he's actually _seen_ the episode, he just knows what people have told him).

So that's his ultimatum.

If they take it, then he does the show and it's what's best for everyone. If they refuse, then he doesn't have to do it and it's not his fault, he isn't the one who shut it down.

He's honestly not sure which one he's hoping for.

* * *

He's out in the woods, removing branches and debris from one of the lesser used hiking trails. A storm had come through last week and the wind had knocked down a few branches, one of the guests had just informed him. The hiking trails are one of the bigger draws for Harrenhal, cutting through the deep woods that surrounds the inn. The one that heads towards his cottage is blocked off and he's never had an issue with it, except the one time.

The branches are fairly small; the storm hadn't been massive so it's not as bad as it could've been. Three years ago, a hurricane had ripped through Blackwater Bay and the resulting storm had devastated parts of the Crownlands. By the time it had reached Harrenhal, it had died down, but he still remembers the downed trees, the power outages, the flooding in the lowlands. No, the storm last week had been nothing.

He's just clearing the last of it when she finds him. She's not nearly as light on her feet as her sister, so he hears her coming.

“Hey,” she says, stopping just close enough that he can hear her. She doesn't even pretend like she'd been out for a hike and ran across him by accident and he appreciates that. “I just wanted to say thanks, for considering it.”

“I have my sights set on the Citadel for Little Sam,” he shrugs. “Gonna need to start saving money.”

She smiles at that and the joke rests between them like a peace offering.

“We'll talk to Tyrion, I think we can probably come to some agreement. He's... nice, for a network executive.” He doesn't ask what she means, he doesn't ask what other experience she's had with network executives. He just nods and doesn't say anything else and she fidgets with the hem of her shirt before finally deciding she's had enough of this interaction. “Well, I just came to say thanks. We're leaving in a little, but you'll be hearing from us? Or Tyrion, I'm still not exactly sure how it works.”

Then she's turning and walking back towards the inn and he stays out on the trails until he's sure they've left.

* * *

It's weeks later when they get the call from Tyrion Lannister. Well, they get a call from an assistant, and they leave the inn in Edd and Wyn's hands while he, Sam, and Gilly head down to King's Landing (Wyn is shocked that she's put in charge and she starts to cry and Jon wants to back out of the room and run but instead he pats her awkwardly on the shoulder).

In the city, they meet up with the attorney they'd retained for this. Davos Seaworth isn't some bigshot lawyer, but he's a friend of Stannis's and had agreed to help them out.

When they get to Tyrion's office, there's a poster of _The Kingslayer_ on the wall and Jon nearly says something, but manages to hold himself back. He doesn't want anyone to know that he'd idolized Jaime Lannister as a kid (he's sure that only Dany knows his deepest, darkest secret – that one of his favorite movies is _The Fool_. He'd rather die than have anyone know he likes a movie based off Florian and Jonquil. He likes it because of the sword fights and the action, _absolutely_ not the romance).

When the Starks show up, they're moved to a bigger meeting room, since Tyrion's office it too small to fit them all. Jon sits so that Sansa isn't in his sightline and he spends the next few hours arguing contracts.

This is what he's good at, it's what he does for the inn. Sure, he does a lot of the handywork, but his real contribution is his ability to negotiate. With Sam as the numbers guy backing him up and Gilly there to reign him in when he becomes a little ruthless and Davos to clear up any legal terms, they're the perfect team. He doesn't even notice when the Starks quiet down and sit back to let him and Tyrion go at it.

By the time they're done, the sun has set and everyone seems exhausted, but they've reached an agreement. Jon doesn't have complete final say over what airs, but each side gets one vote: Harrenhal, the Starks, and the network. Majority rules if there's any dispute.

Sam and Gilly seem happy with the monetary compensation. It's more than enough to cover shutting down the inn for four weeks of filming.

“I guess all our research paid off?” Sam says with a little laugh as they're driving to the hotel that night. Jon and Sam hadn't been idle since the Stark's last visit. They'd researched everything they could about TV production, merchandising, marketing, in preparation for the meeting, and Davos will go through it all again to make sure everything is covered.

Jon feels exhausted but satisfied with what they've accomplished today. It was interesting, negotiating something bigger than liquor prices and county inspections (and he's reminded again, of Commander Mormont telling him he could go far in the Watch, that he could be a real leader, but he shakes that out of his head).

* * *

They agree to film from mid November to mid December. September through October is usually their busiest season, and they always get a boost around Christmas and New Years, so they'll slot filming between the two.

It's still three months away. They update their website regarding the closure, they rearrange any prior bookings (luckily only a few so far). They prep their staff on what to expect. They provide the network with paperwork, old books and ledgers from the inn. Jon knows they want to focus on the history of it, too, but Jon will leave that to the network.

Three months.

Three months until he can reassure himself. Three months until he can prove to himself that all of this is nonsense. Three months until he can stop sleeping with the TV on, with the lights on. Three months until he can stop dreaming of all the people he's killed.

* * *

_In his dreams he's back in Castle Black. He watches them enter the compound, watches the wariness on their faces. They don't trust the Watch, but they trust_ him. _They followed him here._

_He's brought them to the slaughter._

_He's distantly aware that this isn't how it went, but in his dream he raises his own gun alongside the other faceless soldiers and fires round after round until they're all gone and in the mass of bodies he can see her orange hair mixing with the blood on the ground._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how TV show contracts work, nor did I do any research into it. I've decided that this fic is half nonsense, half serious. Is Jon haunted by terrible things in his past? Yes. Is he a Jaime Lannister fanboy? Also yes.
> 
> This is the last of the 'set up' stuff. Next chapter will be Sansa and a time jump.


	3. in which Sansa meets a Ghost at midnight

The Harrenhal Inn is a different being altogether in the fall.

Maybe there's something to Bran's thesis that things in the autumn are just _spookier_. The changing leaves and almost-bare branches of the forest surrounding the inn absolutely add to it's haunted feel. The rustle of the dead leaves, the chill in the air, it makes her shiver.

They're unpacking the van, unloading bags and cases of equipment and their personal items. She's thankful they've managed to keep the production to a minimum, she'd been afraid that the place would be crawling with a network crew, _strangers_. But Jon had seen to that.

Jon had seen to a lot, actually.

She'd been surprised in the meeting with the network, the way he almost seemed to come alive as he'd argued and debated. He was ruthless, it was... _impressive_ is the word that comes to mind.

So it's the five of them and two people from the network – a producer named Brienne and her assistant Podrick. She's there to watch over them and normally that would make Sansa nervous, but she _likes_ Brienne so far.

Mostly she likes that it's not Tyrion. She hadn't lied to Jon, Tyrion is fine, for an executive. But he's still an executive _and_ related to the very famous Jaime Lannister, which means he's also distantly related to Cersei Baratheon, her ex's mother. She knew Joffrey was related to Jaime Lannister, some cousin or uncle some number removed (he'd bragged about it incessantly), she just never expected to meet any of them.

“Come on,” Arya hoists her duffel bag onto her shoulder, “let's go see what rooms they've given us.”

Sansa grabs two bags of her own, the ones that she knows holds most of her essentials, and follows Arya into the inn. The front doors creak appropriately as they swing open.

“Welcome to the Harrenhal Inn,” the front desk clerk (Wynafryd, Sansa remembers her name being) says officially, gesturing around her. “May I show you to your rooms?” There's a lilt to her voice, like she's trying to sound dramatic and spooky and it makes Arya snort. Wyn's mouth tilts into a small smile in response and Sansa supposes it's the closest both sides are going to get to an acknowledgment of the hostility the last time they'd been here.

As Wyn leads them up the central staircase, she lets them know that they have five rooms set aside – Sansa, Arya and Gendry, Bran and Meera, Brienne, and Podrick. She mentions that Sam and Gilly have a room that they'll use if they need to be on set at night and one for Jon just in case, though he lives in the woods behind the inn.

She and Arya drop their bags in their respective rooms and Sansa's about to head back down when Arya catches her arm and stops her. They can hear Wyn back downstairs chatting with someone, but they're the only ones on the second floor now.

“You ok?” Arya asks, mouth twisted into a frown.

She's not sure how to answer because she honestly doesn't know.

“It's just a lot,” she shrugs. “Aren't you nervous?”

“Fuck yeah I'm nervous,” Arya laughs and it startles a laugh out of Sansa, too.

“Could've fooled me.”

  
Arya shrugs. “You know how shit I am with emotions. Just try not to think that it's TV, ya know? It's just us.” Sansa doesn't bring up the fact that it _isn't_ just them.

“It doesn't bother you that we'll be talking about mom and dad and Robb?”

This is the heart of it, the decision they'd come to just two weeks ago. The decision they'd been debating for almost three months. This is what makes Sansa nervous – talking about what happened, what she saw. It's one thing to get hate comments on their videos saying that what they find on their hunts isn't real, that they're faking it, that it's all nonsense. It's going to be a completely different thing when people start talking like that about _her_ experience, about _mom_.

She was outnumbered, though. Everyone thought it was best to talk about why they got into the business, especially if they could do it on their own terms. And Sansa knows they're right, it's good for the show and the narrative, but it's also different for them. _They_ didn't see mom. It's not their experience, it's hers.

* * *

“Guess we have you to thank for a three week paid vacation, huh?” Edd grins as he sits on the chair provided, smoothing his thinning hair back.

Behind her, Brienne murmurs something and Pod rushes forward with a compact and dabs some powder onto Edd's face to reduce the shine.

“You sure do, so to repay us, we'll need some real juicy stories,” Arya jokes as Meera comes up next to Pod and pins a lavalier mic onto Edd's shirt collar.

Sansa will admit that the best thing about having a television budget is all the new gadgets they have. All of them have lav mics now, no more Gendry trying to follow them quietly with a boom mic while they move about. In fact, most of their equipment is better, smaller, lighter. Unpacking the van had been much easier with the new equipment, even if there was more of it. She's never seen Bran more excited.

“I have a good one about soup,” Edd says. “There I was, in the kitchen...”

“Save it for when we're rolling,” Meera scolds and moves back behind the camera.

They've been at Harrenhal for a few days now. The first week they're doing interviews with the employees, getting their stories and experiences. It will help with what to look for and where. All of the employees had seemed enthusiastic (and also very excited for their three week vacations). The only employee that didn't seem overly excited to leave was Jeyne.

Jeyne is especially skittish and from small things Gilly has said, Sansa thinks she'd gotten out of an abusive marriage and now lives in the hotel. The thought makes Sansa sad, but she also remembers Gilly saying that Jeyne had recently joined a book club in town and has been getting out more. She'll be staying in Gilly and Sam's guest room until this is all over.

Bran counts down to rolling and she begins her interview with Edd, who is extremely easy to question. He's open and talkative about his experiences and even though she's very sure he's exaggerating that his black bean soup had started bubbling _before_ he turned the stove on, he's the most entertaining interview she's had so far.

They're talking about his employment at Harrenhal when he mentions that he'd been in the Watch with Jon and that surprises her and before she can stop herself, she asks how long he'd been in.

“Fifteen years,” he muses, brow furrowing as he seems to think back and a shadow crosses his features. “Snow and Tarly had gotten out the year before and when I didn't renew my contract, I called 'em up and they gave me the job.”

Fifteen years is a long time to spend with the Watch, usually anyone who went past their initial five year contract stayed in the Watch for life, even she knows this. She wonders what that flicker of sadness was, if there was a reason he left, but she doesn't press. She learned her lesson last time, that's not what she's here for.

Wynafryd is their last interview of the staff and she tells them about her experience with _Lady Alys,_ the ghost that haunts the east wing of the inn.

Alys is a fascinating story, possibly the most tragic. Her husband had gone to fight in a war and her son had been stillborn. After receiving news of her husbands death, Alys had thrown herself from the attic window and to this day, guests sometimes see a body fall past their windows on that side of the building. Some hear footsteps in the attic, others smell a woman's perfume. During their research, they'd actually come across nearly a dozen police reports going back decades of guests calling to report a woman falling to her death, only for the police to arrive and find nothing.

When Wyn is done, they pack up their equipment for the day. They'll still need to interview Jon, Sam, and Gilly, but those will be done tomorrow and likely throughout filming.

* * *

She finds herself starving in the middle of the night and so she gets up and puts on her shoes and heads down to the kitchen.

Edd had shown them around before he left and they'd stocked the industrial refrigerators and the cabinets with supplies for their stay. She makes herself a cup of tea (she can't find a kettle so she has to microwave the water) and grabs one of Arya's protein bars and hopes Arya won't notice one missing. They're not even that good, she's doing Arya a favor by eating one, she thinks as she swallows the last bit of it. It's too dry, but then again she's never been a fan of these things like Arya is.

She's in the middle of a sip of tea when she hears a thump come from the direction of the lobby. She freezes in place, heart thudding madly in her ribs, and listens but the sound doesn't repeat. She slowly sets her cup on the counter, making sure not to make any noise and walks as quietly as she can to the kitchen door and puts her ear up to it.

Why, _why_ , did she not bring anything with her? She's in a _haunted inn_ in the _middle of the night_ while filming a TV show about _ghosts_. She should have a camera or at least a microphone with her at all times.

Her phone, she thinks, patting at the pockets in her sweatpants. It won't be as great quality, but she can at least document _something_. But her phone is upstairs charging and she curses her stupidity. Even without the ghosts, she's still all alone, at night, in a place she's unfamiliar with, she should at least have her _phone_. Arya would be furious with her if she ever finds out.

And honestly, without equipment, without a camera and a microphone, she feels truly alone. She has to go back through the lobby to get back to her room, the direction the noise came from. Maybe it's one of the others coming down for food (but then, they would have made more noise, they would have gotten to the kitchen by now).

She thinks back on their research and remembers with a sinking feeling that the son of the original builder had died mysteriously of a heart attack in the lobby.

_It's nothing_ , she forces her mind to think. What had Jon said during his interview last year? It's an old building, it moves and settles and creaks. It was nothing (she's much braver with Arya by her side and cameras all around her).

She steels herself and pushes the swinging kitchen door open as slowly as she can and slips out, keeping her steps light as she makes her way towards the dark lobby. Why aren't there any other lights on? Right, haunted inn, TV show. But they haven't even set up the cameras yet, she could have turned on some lights to guide her back!

Halfway down the hall to the lobby, she hears another noise, footsteps and a scratching that makes her heart jump into her throat. She's about to turn and run back to the safety of the kitchen lights when the door to the lobby swings open and a light flashes into her eyes and she lets out a gasp and stumbles back a step, hip slamming into a side table.

“Sansa?”

Fear rushes out of her and all she's left with is the adrenaline as she looks up at the owner of the flashlight.

“Jon, you scared me.”

“Didn't mean to,” he says and she can't see the expression on his face because the light from the flashlight is throwing his features into shadow. “Saw a light on in the kitchen and came in to check it out.”

“I got hungry,” she explains lamely, and then, “why were you out so late?” She wonders if he'd been in town, she remembers Sam telling her about a pub that they all go to. There's a movement behind him and something large and white moves around to his side and another flutter of fear rushes through her before her eyes adjust, squinting against the beam of light. “Is that a _dog_?”

“Was taking him for a walk,” Jon nods at the white mass that she can now clearly see _is_ a dog.

The gasp that escapes her this time isn't out of fear and she moves forward tentatively. “Is he...”

“You can pet him. He's supposed to be a guard dog but really he's a big softie.” There's a soft smile on Jon's face that she's never seen before and it _does something_ to her.

Instead of dealing with _that_ , she holds out her hand, palm up, for the dog to sniff, which he does with enthusiasm before nuzzling his whole head against it. “What's his name?” she asks as she kneels down to the dog's level and begins to scratch behind his ears.

There's a hesitation and when she looks up at Jon, he's rubbing the back of his neck like he's uncomfortable. “Uh, it's Ghost.”

“ _Ghost?_ ”

“Cause he's white and he lives in a haunted house...” Jon looks rueful, like he expects her to think the name is stupid.

“Perfect,” she says instead and turns back to Ghost. “Aren't you just perfect,” she coos in what Arya calls her _animal voice_. “You're too sweet to be a guard dog, aren't you?”

“He's honestly useless,” the smile is back on Jon's face.

“Why do you need a guard dog?”

There's another pause before he answers. “Gilly was worried about me, after the break in.”

“Wyn mentioned that,” her heart sinks at the idea of it. “It was because of us?”

“It was a group of drunk bachelorettes,” he says with a sigh. “I mean, I'm pretty sure. They didn't take anything and they had seen the show and wanted to meet me, I'm assuming one of them did it.”

“You weren't there?”

“I was...” he trails off and seems to rethink what he's about to say. “I was in town and found the broken window when I got back.”

“I'm sorry, if we were the cause of it,” she says this to Ghost instead of him, her guilt keeping her eyes away from him.

He sighs and shifts. “You're also the reason we had our best year ever.”

“ _Our_ show?” she sounds incredulous. “But you've been on other shows. Ghost Seekers! They're huge!”

When she looks back up at him, he shrugs. It must have been the interview with him, which is unreal to her. She knows there was a lot of buzz around Jon prior to their interview, a lot of internet speculation, and they were the only ones to ever get him on camera. She remembers how wild the online paranormal community had gotten after they posted the episode, she just hadn't realized it spilled out into real life. Into _his_ life.

And she remembers all the thirst posts on reddit and suddenly the drunk bachelorette girls trying to find Jon in his cabin at night makes a whole lot more sense (she remembers reading those posts and feeling a sort of possessiveness that she knows she has no right to).

“You done in there?” he nods towards the kitchen doors where the light spills through the cracks.

“I left my tea on the counter,” she says though she knows she could just clean it up tomorrow. Instead, she stands up and heads back in, dumping the now cold tea into the sink. As she leaves, she turns the light out and now all that's left is Jon's flashlight and a thought crosses her mind. “How long have you been in the building?”

He looks at her strangely, “couple minutes? I came in through the back and then through the lobby.”

That explains the footsteps and Ghosts nails against the wood and tile explain the scratching, but... “I heard a noise,” she tells him. “Before you came in I think. Are you sure you haven't been here longer?”

He shakes his head and her heart skips a beat. The thump wasn't him, couldn't have been. She'd waited and listened afterwards for long minutes. He seems to understand her thoughts because his lips twitch up into a smile and he says “need me to escort you back upstairs?”

She shoots him a glare and almost says something about a subtle attempt to invite himself to her room, but she stifles that. They're not mentioning the kiss and this whole situation is still too new, too tentative to make jokes like _that_ (to _flirt_ , her mind corrects, though she tries to shut that voice down).

“No, I'll be fine,” she says with as much authority in her voice as she can manage. He simply shrugs and they head back into the lobby, Ghost trying to tangle her in his leash as they go. When they get to where they'll head separate ways – him to the back door and her to the stairwell – she sets her shoulders and marches across the lobby with a confidence she absolutely does not feel and it's not until she's up the stairs and around the corner out of sight that she hears the back door open and then close.

When she is out of sight, she _runs_ back to her room, shutting and locking the door firmly behind her and then she slips off her shoes and gets into bed and pulls the covers up over her head. Her heart is beating erratically in her chest and she's not sure if it's from the possible ghost, running through the halls, or Jon. Maybe all three.

It takes a while, but eventually she calms down enough to pull the covers down below her chin and falls into an uneasy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally this story was like, *all angst* but honestly I can't keep it up and it's veering into... well, not that. Jon's backstory is still real dark but honestly I don't know if this story is going to be as heavy as it initially was in my head. It might turn into full blown nonsense (it might already be?)
> 
> Anyway, I say this in all my ghost stories, but I know this kind of stuff isn't for everyone so I'm always super appreciative of anyone who is reading and enjoying this!


	4. in which Jon meets an unexpected guest

He has grossly overestimated his ability to keep his chill.

He finds out on accident that she likes to get up early, grab a cup of coffee, and sit outside on the wraparound porch, curled up in a blanket. He always wakes up before the sun, but usually Ghost doesn't need to go out that early, except this time he did and so Jon finds her sitting in the dim early morning light clutching a mug to her chest and scrolling through something on her phone. He doesn't want to scare her, so he purposefully makes as much noise as he can and she looks up and gives him a small wave as Ghost sniffs at a pile of leaves and sticks.

And so he finds himself making Ghost take earlier walks each morning. They don't talk, he walks by with Ghost and she always gives him the same little wave and smile and he tries to convince himself he didn't change his schedule just for that. That would be _pathetic_. He's a grown man.

* * *

Sam is finishing up his first interview, though Bran keeps calling it a _talking head_. Sam and Gilly will be in the show, too, so like Jon, they'll be doing periodic interviews throughout filming to talk about the experience.

Meera is questioning Sam, but Jon knows they're having Sansa talk to him and that makes him nervous and so he gently touches her elbow and nods his head towards the door. She frowns for a moment, but follows him out, both of them trying to make as little noise as possible so that it doesn't pick up on the mics. In the other room, they're finally able to talk.

“I just wanted to ask if you could not talk about the Watch,” he keeps his eyes on anything but her, but she's in his peripheral and he can see a crease form between her eyebrows.

“Like at all? We've already talked about it with Edd and Sam and even Gilly...”

“No, you can ask me if I was in it and about meeting Sam there if you need, but last time... just don't try to dig too deep.”

He can feel her stare, like she's trying to bore her way into his brain, but eventually she just says “ok.”

He's surprised, honestly. Last time they seemed like they'd do anything for a story from him and now she's letting it go so easily when he's giving her an obvious reason to ask more questions. He nods his thanks and doesn't tell her that he's doing it for her own safety. For his, for Sam's, for Edd's, for Gilly and Little Sam.

The Watch doesn't like to be talked about when they aren't controlling the narrative.

“Is there anything else?” her question takes him off guard and he finally looks at her. She seems to sense his confusion, “anything else you don't want me to ask about?” She must see his surprise, because this time it's her that can't look at him and she shrugs softly. “I hated that interview last time. I shouldn't have let Bran air it, but...”

He scratches at his beard and a small laugh escapes him. “And here all this time I was blaming myself for how terrible it went.”

“You watched it?” her eyes finally meet his again.

“Nah, but everyone else filled me in on how much of an idiot I was.”

“Not an idiot,” her voice is soft, barely more than a whisper and it makes him want to lean into her. “Did you look at our findings?”

He shakes his head and she huffs out a breath in exasperation and he feels a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. When she sees his smile, she tries to frown deeper, but she's clearly trying to keep herself from smiling, too.

“Did you do _any_ research before we started this?” she asks and he can hear the amusement in her voice.

“Not at all.” She puts her hands on her hips and gives him a glare that doesn't quite work. “Isn't the whole point of this to prove to me that ghosts exist? Better if I start off knowing nothing, right?”

“Fine,” she concedes. “I do appreciate that you don't look homeless this time, though.”

“That was part of Tyrion's stipulations,” he reminds her (Tyrion had taken one look at him at the meeting and had sighed and shaken his head). “So I look presentable for TV?”

She sweeps her eyes over him and he's honestly never really thought about his appearance that much, especially not since he got out of the Watch, but suddenly he hopes desperately that he _does_ look presentable. She opens her mouth to say something just as the door to the music room opens (Sansa had picked the old music room to conduct the interviews in because she thought it looked the best on camera).

“Your turn,” Bran calls and then heads back inside.

* * *

The interview goes well. He can tell it's even a little boring from the way Arya spends the whole time on her phone and even Meera and Bran look uninterested. That's a good thing, he decides, and when they're done, Sansa shoots him a thumbs up.

As he passes her to grab his coat, he whispers a _thanks_ and she nods in acknowledgment.

* * *

On Saturday morning he's out raking leaves from the front of the inn – it's too much to try and keep it constantly clean, but he likes to make sure the front looks somewhat decent, especially since they'll be doing establishing shots of the exterior soon. An old beat up sedan rolls to a stop in front of the inn and he watches a kid get out and look up at the building.

“We're closed,” Jon calls, leaning the rake against one of the fences and making his way over.

“Yeah, I know,” the kid says and starts heading towards the building anyway.

“That means no guests,” he can't believe the audacity of this kid, he thinks, as the boy turns to look at him and it's then that Jon notices the resemblance.

“You must be Jon,” the kid that Jon can only assume is the youngest Stark says. “I recognize you from the video.”

“Rickon,” the name finally comes to him, and Rickon nods. “They didn't tell me you were coming.”

“Weird,” Rickon says and Jon can tell from his tone that it's _not_ weird, his siblings didn't know.

Jon sighs and tells Rickon to follow him and leads him in towards the music room, where the Starks are setting up for more interviews – this time their own.

“Rickon?” Sansa sees him first, she's in the lobby heading towards the music room with a battery pack in her hands. She changes course and makes her way over and throws her arms around her little brother.

Sansa's tall for a girl, but even though he's years younger, Rickon towers over her, all lanky and awkward with youth. “Hey Sansy,” he hugs her back and Jon hears her grumble, he assumes at the name.

“What are you doing here?” she pulls from the hug and frowns. “Is everything ok?”

“Arya texted me that you guys were gonna talk about our family, I figured I should be here, since they're _my_ family too.”

Jon watches Sansa's shoulders fall and she looks down at the ground. “You're not eighteen yet, we promised Nana and Pops that you wouldn't be on camera until...”

“Well _someone_ has to make sure Bran's not a total ass about it,” Rickon throws his hands up and Jon decides that he needs to leave them to their family business and he exits the lobby as quietly as he can.

* * *

He doesn't see the Starks for the rest of the day, but Rickon's car sits outside so Jon knows he hasn't left. He, Sam, and Gilly leave them to whatever they're doing, locked away in the music room. He won't intrude.

It's later that night, nearing nine when he gets a text from Sansa asking if he's taking Ghost out for a walk anytime soon. The text strikes him as odd, and he tells her they just finished a walk not fifteen minutes ago. All he gets in response in an _oh ok_ and something sits uncomfortably in his chest, so he tells her that Ghost is restless so they'll probably take another soon (Ghost isn't restless, but she doesn't need to know that).

Twenty minutes later, he's leading Ghost down the trail towards the inn and he's startled when she appears on the path and meets him and immediately kneels down and hugs Ghost around the neck. Ghost sits patiently for this, looking pleased with himself.

“Sorry,” she says eventually when she pulls her face out of Ghosts fur. “I just needed... you know how they say animals always make you feel better?” She gives a little laugh that cracks in the middle and she won't look up at him. “We had a dog when we were kids, Robb named him Grey Wind-” is all she gets out before her voice really _does_ break and she starts to sniffle and wipe at her cheeks.

Jon isn't sure what to do, he's never been sure what to do with crying people (his mind goes back to the house on Dragonstone, to holding Dany as she cried into his shoulder silently, trying not to make any noise so her brother wouldn't hear. He'd never known what to say). He kneels down next to her as Ghost nuzzles into her chest and she sighs.

“Sorry, sorry,” she whispers and shakes her head, seeming angry at the tears that still spill over. “We talked about him today. Him and mom and dad. I think it's the most we've talked about them... ever.”

He doesn't ask her what they talked about or how it went. She's not Dany, he can't pull her into a hug and try to comfort her that way.

“Do you wanna take Ghost for the night?”

She looks up at him, startled, and shakes her head, “I couldn't.”

“I think he likes you more than me anyway,” Jon shrugs and brings a hand up to scratch behind Ghost's ear. Ghost looks overjoyed at all the attention. “He's already been fed, just leave him some water and I'll come get him in the morning.”

This seems to have the opposite effect that he was going for, because she starts to cry even harder. She's got a thick layer of makeup on (television makeup was different from regular makeup, he'd been informed earlier this week) but he can still see how red her nose is underneath, the puffiness under her eyes. He stands up and she follows and he hands her the leash before she can protest.

“Get some sleep, you guys have a long day setting up tomorrow.”

She nods and sniffs and leads Ghost away (he follows happily without even a glance back, the traitor) and Jon watches to make sure she gets inside before he heads back to his little cottage.

It'll be his first time sleeping alone since he got Ghost nearly eight months ago. After he'd gotten back from his trip to Dorne, he'd still been slightly on edge, not sleeping well, and Gilly had insisted he go back to a therapist. He'd done it to appease her for a little before giving up (he pretended to keep going for nearly a month after, but Gilly eventually found out. She'd just sighed but hadn't fought with him about it).

The only good thing to come out of that therapist, he thinks, is that they'd recommended a service dog. Something about PTSD (something in Jon had rebelled against the idea of it, which he knows is ridiculous, but he didn't ever want to have to tell people he had a _service dog._ He knows it's weak of him, it's petty. He's a coward). So instead Jon had gotten a _guard dog_. But even though Ghost isn't trained as a service dog, Jon has noticed that he's less anxious now, that he sleeps better. He likes having something that relies on him, even if it's just for food and walks.

He sleeps terribly that night without Ghost at his feet, but he finds he doesn't much mind, if it means Sansa slept alright.

* * *

The next morning he heads out at his usual time and finds her sitting on the wraparound porch with her mug of coffee and Ghost laying at her feet. She gets up to meet him and hands him Ghost's leash.

“Thanks,” her fingers tap nervously on the mug that she now clutches in both hands.

“He wasn't any trouble?” he asks casually, keeping his voice as light as he can. The last thing he wants to do is make her cry again. She shakes her head no.

“No, he was good.”

At their feet, Ghost preens under both of their gazes and Jon wants to roll his eyes. He never realized what an attention seeker Ghost was before Sansa (although maybe, he reasons, it's _just_ for Sansa and suddenly Jon can't be as mad about it).

“Cameras today, right?” She seems relieved at the topic change and she nods. “You guys need help?”

“If you want,” she chews on her bottom lip (he's noticed she does it when she's uncertain, when she thinks she might be bothering someone). “I'm sure everyone would appreciate the help. I think Arya is roping Rickon into helping, too.”

“He's tall, it'll probably be useful.”

She laughs at that. “Do you want some coffee? I made a whole pot.”

“Already had some,” he gestures back towards the trail to his house. “I get up pretty early.”

“Oh,” she seems disappointed but he thinks he's probably just misreading that.

“Plus, I'm sure Ghost's hungry.” At the mention of food, Ghost does perk up noticeably and that makes Sansa laugh again. “I'll see you later, then.”

She nods and heads back to the porch and he heads back into the woods.

* * *

They spend the day mounting cameras. He follows Meera with a ladder and follows her directions for where and how to mount their cameras (luckily, they're able to be mounted without leaving any holes in the walls, he would've drawn the line at that). She goes on and on about the types of cameras, infrared versus regular versus thermal. It's all nonsense to him, but he lets her talk because she seems enthusiastic about it. He can tell why she and Bran get along so well.

They also mount microphones around the building and it feels strange to think that nearly everything that goes on in here will be recorded for the next three weeks. The only places that aren't are the bathrooms and the offices. The Starks had insisted that they at least have cameras in their bedrooms, just in case, and Jon wonders how they can possibly go to sleep knowing they're being recorded. The idea makes him feel claustrophobic.

To be fair, though, none of them seem that uncomfortable in front of cameras in general, he supposes they're just used to it at this point. He knows that in addition to doing their episodes, they also made other types of videos, vlogs and behind the scenes stuff. Gilly even follows them on Twitter and Instagram. It's strange to him, to have one's life so visible to... _everyone_. He remembers the discomfort he'd felt when he first found all those reddit pages about him, when he first Googled himself.

He doesn't think he'll ever be comfortable on camera, he's not built for it and he hates the idea that anyone could see him and find out where he is.

It's stupid. His name is on the deed to this building, he's not living off the grid. If someone wanted to find him, they could. The Watch certainly knows where he is, and he knows the reality is that there isn't anyone else looking for him.

Well, at least no one left alive.


	5. in which Sansa has a late night breakfast

She tries not to let the dark of the attic get to her.

The silence feels delicate almost, like at any moment something could tear through it and she's not sure if she wants that to happen or not. She clears her throat and takes a breath.

“Alys, my name is Sansa,” she says to the dark room, fingers clutched around the voice recorder in her hand. There's a night vision camera set on a tripod in front of her and she knows there's another mounted in the corner of the room for a wider angle. There's no response, but she has the voice recorder running anyway. Sometimes they don't hear things at the time, only to catch them later when they listen back. “If you're here with me, could you let me know?”

Arya is two floors below, they're doing solo sessions in the east wing attic where Alys was said to have jumped to her death. Sansa's up first, and when she's done, Arya will come up and spend ten minutes alone here. Arya's always better at this, Sansa tends to freak herself out when she has to be alone in a dark room (their viewers think her fear is hilarious and she's not sure whether to be insulted by that or not).

“Alys-” her sentence is broken off by a gasp as she feels something cold brush the back of her neck and a violent shiver rips through her and she whips around, though she knows she'll see nothing. “I just felt something cold on the back of my neck,” she whispers for the cameras. Her free hand has found it's way to the back of her neck under her ponytail, but it doesn't feel any colder than the rest of her skin. “Alys, if that was you, can do you that again? Or touch my hand?”

She sets her voice recorder on her lap and picks up the thermal camera from the ground and aims it at her now outstretched hand. On the screen, her hand is a mass of white-oranges and reds, softer yellows and greens where her sleeve starts, and black-blue around it. She keeps her hand outstretched and counts a full minute, but there's no repeat of the cold.

Before she puts the thermal away, she sweeps it around the room but the only change in temperature is near the windows.

“I don't think it was a breeze,” she narrates for the camera, setting the thermal down and walking over to one of the windows. She holds her hand out and moves it around the frame. “I don't feel any drafts and I was far enough away that it shouldn't have felt so distinct. Plus, it felt like something moved my hair.” They'll have to review the footage to see if her hair _did_ move.

Just as she's moving to settle back on the chair placed in the center of the room, she hears something by the window rattle, and she turns to face it. There's only silence, but she could have sworn she heard something, like someone trying to open the window...

A sharp knock on the door makes her jump and Arya calls out “times up” through the wood. She sighs and picks up her equipment as Arya opens the door. She hands off the recorder and the thermal and Arya goes over to the chair in the middle.

“Ten minutes,” Arya reminds her, and she nods and sets her phone alarm before heading out and shutting the door behind her.

Two floors down, Pod is waiting with Meera, who already has a camera set up to interview her about the experience. She explains the touch and the noise at the window, but doesn't have anything else to report.

Arya's ten minutes seem to fly by (she swears when she was in the room it felt like ten _years_ ) and says she didn't experience anything.

“Maybe we'll get some EVP or something,” Meera shrugs. “We should have Jon do it, maybe Gendry?”

Gendry is still technically _crew_ , but their audience loves him so they tend to bring him out on camera whenever they can.

Jon and Gendry are on the opposite side of the inn with Bran and Brienne. Jon is leading them around to get establishing shots of the exterior, of anything that looks spooky. Jon had told them about a run down gazebo in the woods and Bran had been excited to get nighttime shots of it. Rickon had been disappointed that he had to leave and Sansa almost wishes he could have stayed. There's a new peace between him and Bran that makes her heart swell, she wanted it to continue, but Rickon has school and so he needed to go back to Riverrun.

They send Pod down to gather Jon and Gendry as Sansa tells Arya about feeling something cold brush her neck and Arya grimaces. “Why are ghosts always so handsy with you?”

It's a common experience – it's usually Sansa that feels a touch or a change in temperature. They've discussed it and come down to the conclusion that Sansa's just more _open_ to the experience. She's always been, and that could mean that ghosts are more likely to touch her or her brain is more likely to interpret things as touches. She likes to think the former, but she knows skeptics will claim the latter.

Jon and Gendry make their way into the room and Arya explains what they'll be doing. Jon stares at the voice recorder that Arya hands him and his brows furrow in a frown.  
  


“So I'm just supposed to sit in a room for ten minutes?” he asks and looks over at Gendry, who shrugs. Sansa doesn't think Gendry believes, really, but he's never complained or said anything, either. He mostly just goes along with it. “This isn't some sort of hazing ritual, is it?” he asks, which makes Arya cackle.

“If I was going to haze you, it'd be better than having you sit in a room,” Arya explains and turns him around and pushes him towards the stairs.

“There's already a camera set up, just remember to turn the voice recorder on!” Sansa calls after him.

“He hates this,” Arya snickers and Sansa tries to keep the smile off her own face.

* * *

Later, they're reviewing the footage and Sansa is _thrilled_.

“Listen,” Bran hisses, setting the audio back fifteen seconds.

They're all sitting around his laptop with headphones in and the audio from Arya's session loops over.

_If there's anyone here, just say something cause I'm getting bored_ , Arya's voice says in the audio.

Sansa leans forward (like that will help her hear or something) and right after Arya's finished speaking, there's a small noise that sounds like a voice. Bran pauses the audio.

“Aemond?” Meera suggests as they all try to figure out what the voice said. “I heard Aemond.”

“You heard Aemond cause that was Alys's husband's name,” Jon says, looking over the file on the desk with Alys's alleged history.

“Ok, what did _you_ hear?” Bran asks.

“Wind?”

The rest of them groan and Jon sighs and sits back in his chair.

Bran and Meera argue over the voice for a short time before they move on to Sansa's tapes. They watch the video, it's mostly just her sitting around doing nothing, all of it will be cut from the show (which she's grateful for, she's never loved having the camera shoved right into her face, she looks horrible in night vision).

It's obvious the moment she feels something touch her and Sansa watches herself jump and look around. Bran pauses the video.

“I couldn't see my hair,” she says and when they all look at her, she explains. “I have a ponytail, it goes over the spot where I felt the touch, so if something _did_ touch me, I was thinking it would've had to move my hair. You can't see it from this angle, though.”

Meera has marked the time on this video and Bran switches over to the wide angle camera, which is off to the side enough that they can see her hair. He queues it up and they all watch as... there's a collective gasp as they watch her ponytail move slightly to the left, a split second before she jumps and turns to look behind her.

  
“Holy shit!” Bran grins and then turns to look at Jon for his reaction. Sansa does too, her heart is pounding wildly, whether from the confirmation of her experience or in anticipation of his reaction, she's not sure.

“You moved,” Jon says slowly with a frown, eyes fixed on the computer screen.

“She didn't,” Arya argues and bats Bran's hand away from the computer, scrolling the video back and playing it again. Sansa watches Jon as he watches the video again. She knows she didn't move and she can tell the exact moment her hair moves on screen because Jon's jaw tightens ever so slightly (she thinks she's getting the hang of reading his moods by how tightly his teeth are clenched, maybe soon she'll be fluent in Jon Snow facial expressions).

After Arya pauses, they all look at Jon again until he shrugs and says “ok.”

“Ok?” Arya nearly yells, throwing her hands up. “Come on, you gotta give us a better reaction than _ok_.”

“I can't explain it,” he says and turns his head to look at Sansa. “You didn't move?”

“I didn't move,” she confirms and he nods like he _believes_ her. The thought gives her a little thrill which she pushes down. The others keep staring at Jon, waiting for a reaction, but he doesn't give them any and finally Arya sighs.

“You're terrible TV.”

“Are you just realizing this?” Jon asks with a slight smile and Arya snorts and even Meera laughs at that.

“You're worse than Gendry.”

“Hey,” Gendry says though he doesn't sound that upset.

Bran queues up Jon's footage and next to her, she can feel Jon tense up. She understands, it took her a while to get used to watching herself on camera.

Most of his time is spent in complete silence. He just sits on the chair in the center of the room with his arms folded across his chest and it's honestly kind of funny. He looks so _harassed_. At one point there's a creaking noise and video Jon doesn't react at all. Bran pauses.

“Did you hear that in the room?”

“Yeah,” Jon shrugs. “It's the house settling.”

Sansa can tell from the way he says it that there's going to be no changing his mind. The others seem to sense this too, because none of them try to argue. The rest of Jon's footage and Gendry's have nothing and so they decide to call it for the night. Bran and Meera stay at the computer to log their results and Arya turns and says “food?”

* * *

In the kitchen, Arya stands in front of one of the industrial refrigerators with the door wide open, staring at the contents.

“You're killing my electric bill,” Jon sighs and Arya turns and sticks her tongue out and doesn't shut the door.

“Make me spaghetti,” Arya directs at Gendry.

“Make it yourself,” he responds and Sansa can feel the sigh escape her as they start to argue.

“If you want food, I suggest you make it yourself,” she says to Jon. “They'll do this for hours.”

“I usually just steal food from Edd,” he tells her. “I really only ever learned how to make breakfast.”

Sansa feels her stomach rumble and she sighs, “breakfast actually sounds wonderful.”

Before she really understands what's happening, Jon's moving towards the fridge and getting out a bunch of food and he starts cooking and honestly, if she wasn't smitten before, she is now. Arya and Gendry break off their argument to add their orders and Jon ends up making a mass of eggs and bacon and Sansa makes toast and gets butter and jam out of the fridge and Gendry manages to find orange juice and Arya makes coffee even though it's nearing one in the morning.

“So how was your first ghost hunt?” she asks when they're all finally standing around the large island in the center of the kitchen. Gendry is shoveling eggs into his mouth like the black hole of food that he is (Sansa swears half their filming budget goes towards feeding Gendry and Arya) while Arya makes an egg and bacon sandwich with the toast.

“More boring than I expected,” Jon answers and she grins.

“Yeah, what no one ever shows is the _hours_ you spend sitting around with nothing happening. No one tells you that ghost hunting is _boring_.”

“You really felt something?” he asks through a mouthful of bacon.

“I did. It felt like... like someone kind of walked behind me and brushed their fingers across the back of my neck.” It's not the best explanation of it, but it's the closest she can get.

He's silent for a while as he eats, his eyes staring off into the distance, unfocused. On the other side of the island, Gendry is shoving the last two pieces of bacon into his mouth as Arya protests, trying to grab wildly at them as Gendry holds her away. His arms are much longer than hers and she looks ridiculous trying to get past them. Jon's voice brings her back from watching them.

“Besides your mom, have you ever _seen_ one?” he asks. “You think that would be the best proof, right?”

She hesitates, “the closest we came was High Hart. We got a figure on thermal, but nothing was there in the normal video and neither of us actually saw it. Other than mom, no.”

It's been a sort of sticking point for them – she saw mom, she maintains it to this day, but she's never seen another, not even close. She's thought a lot about it, the _why_ of it.

“I think,” she's hesitant to tell Jon her theory, afraid of what he'll say, “I think to actually _see_ one, there needs to be a... connection? Like, she was my _mom_. These others, they have no connection to me, so maybe that's why?”

She looks over and Jon looks almost pale in the fluorescent lights of the kitchen. He's not looking at her, eyes fixed on something across the room and he seems very far away in that moment. It lasts only a second and then he seems to come back to himself and he clears his throat and nods, but doesn't say anything.

* * *

She's awake until nearly sunrise, thinking, thinking, _thinking._

She's never been good at sleeping away from home, though she does it often enough. She wishes Ghost were here again. That had been the best night's sleep she's had here, with Ghost softly snore-wheezing at the foot of her bed. It had calmed her, smoothed over the jagged edges of the day. Having to call Nana and tell her that Rickon was at Harrenhal, finding out that he'd taken the car without them knowing, asking for permission to let Rickon be on camera (he was insistent because it was his family too and it breaks her heart).

It never really struck her, how little they talk about them. Mom, dad, Robb. They'll come up sometimes, but always briefly, always just a casual mention. Maybe some silence, a pause in the conversation. But they don't _talk_ about them, about their absence and the weight of it. The only person she's ever talked to about it had been her therapist (she tried, once, to talk about it with Willas, but she'd stopped when he kept making the same sympathetic cooing noise over and over and petting at her hair and it _infuriated_ her, she's still not sure why).

She's not sure she'll ever be able to watch the footage of them talking about it, but she's glad it happened. She knows now that Bran cares, that Arya feels more than anger, that Rickon hates that he was so young, that he can't remember (and she hates that they haven't told him things, that they've kept mom and dad and Robb tucked away from him for so long).

Meera and Gendry had left halfway through, leaving the camera running, like what they saw was somehow not meant for them. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that footage will never air. Maybe nothing will ever air. Maybe this whole thing will go up in flames and the show will never see the light of day and she honestly can't bring herself to care, because if everything else fails, if everything else goes wrong, she has _them_.

She felt it, the shift in their dynamic, the way Arya had squeezed her arm before heading upstairs, how Bran and Rickon laughed together in a way they rarely did (they'd fought all their lives; Bran could be cold, Rickon too overprotective of her feelings that Bran so easily dismissed). She knows she could have gone into Arya's room that night and slept with her – Arya would have kicked Gendry out in a heartbeat, Sansa has never been more sure of anything. But she didn't want to, she'd seen the way Gendry had folded Arya in his arms, had gently teased her about her red-rimmed eyes, how she'd wiped her running nose on his shirt in retaliation (Arya has never been so soft as she is with him).

Instead she'd gone to see Ghost, to see the one other person here who seemed to know what it was like to lose someone. She hasn't asked Jon, but she knows. Maybe some day he'll tell her. Maybe some day she'll ask.

For now, though, she's content with the tenuous peace between them, they way he seems to be letting his guard down ever so slightly. There's still something locked away, a ghost, a shadow behind his eyes. But he let her take his dog, he cooked for them when he could have gone back to his own home, he made jokes and talked with them, he _trusted_ her when she told him she hadn't moved.

It's not a lot, but it's _something_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who knew writing ghost hunting would be so hard? it's also real difficult to make reviewing video and audio sound interesting so... whoops


	6. in which Jon puts a Ghost on a diet

“It's a spirit box,” she explains, holding the device out between them.

He's never heard of one, but it sounds like the thing in Ghostbusters that they use to trap the ghosts (he doesn't say this because it sounds dumb and he really doesn't want to sound dumb).

“It scans radio frequencies really fast, like skips through them and it's supposed to pick up spirit voices.” When he raises his eyes to her, she shrugs with a small smile. “Bran got it, it's not my favorite. I'm gonna turn it on, but warning, it can be kinda loud.”

Loud isn't the word he'd use, he thinks as she turns the spirit box on. _Obnoxious_ is better. She wasn't kidding – the box skips from radio frequency to radio frequency, never staying on one long enough to hear anything, it's a jarring experience. He doesn't realize he's making a face until she laughs and he relaxes his features back to neutral (he has to remember that there's cameras on him).

She leaves it on for only a minute or so, but it's a _long_ minute. Eventually she lets out a sigh as she turns it off and shrugs. “I think we've gotten something out of this thing maybe once?”

They're sitting in one of the bedrooms in the east wing – one of the largest in the place, they usually rent it out as a sort of honeymoon suite when the need arises. Apparently this is where the original builder, Harren Hoare, burned to death in his sleep (his son, after rebuilding, would end up dropping dead of a heart attack a mere decade later in the lobby, his last word was reported to be _father_ ).

It's been strange, these past two weeks. Ghost hunting is new to him and he's not used to being up so late, not anymore. He used to be (in the Watch, with the Wildlings, night was his time) but that was nearly a decade ago and these past two weeks he's been getting home only an hour or so before he usually wakes for the day.

Every night they work in different combinations. Mostly it's Sansa and Arya, they're the show and Jon has watched them interact enough now to realize why. They bicker and fight and get frustrated with each other, but then something will happen and Sansa will gasp and Arya will stand in front of her, fierce and protective. They'll banter and laugh together and he understands why people watch them- when they're together there's something almost captivating about them (he's never thought of someone as _captivating_ before, but the two of them demand attention and he can't pinpoint _why._ He refuses to acknowledge that he thinks Sansa alone is captivating).

That usually leaves him as an awkward third wheel or he's with Gendry. Some nights it's Arya and Gendry, sometimes him and Arya. Some nights, like tonight, it's him and Sansa (he also refuses to acknowledge that he likes these the best).

He finds her fascinating (not _captivating,_ stop it). The way she seems to care _so much_ about everything and everyone. How open she is to all this ghost nonsense. How she seems to expect the best out of people, even if they've let her down. How hard she tries to make everyone around her happy. How excited she gets about the things she's interested in. He thinks he could listen to her talk forever.

He thinks it's the same thing that made him pick Sam, out of everyone in their recruit class, as a friend. Jon's never been _open_ or _optimistic_. He's always shoved his interests deep down, kept them closed off. Locked any hopes or dreams away as impossible and stupid. Sam had been fascinating, too. The first day, they'd happened to sit next to each other in the mess hall and Sam had rambled to their table about computers for a half hour. The others had clearly hated it, but Jon found him fascinating. There was something... well, there was just _something_ about watching someone enthuse about the things they love. Sam had been nervous and awkward and terrible at training and was almost never able to hit a target but he cared so much about everything and everyone.

Somehow Jon's never put it together before, _why_ he immediately felt drawn to Sam, why their friendship works. It's taken Sansa to shake something loose in his brain.

* * *

“So, Jon, we'll ask again. Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No.” He says it without hesitation and he can hear all of them groan behind the camera. “ _But_ ,” he continues, “I will concede there are things that I can't explain away right now.”

“I think that's the best we're gonna get,” Meera laughs, signaling Bran to cut.

Sansa walks over and starts to unpin the mic from his shirt collar (he could easily do this himself, he thinks, but he's not going to complain as her fingers brush against his collarbone).

“Sounds like we're slowly turning you,” she teases, switching the mic off and placing it back into it's box.

“Is this a cult?” he asks and she laughs, but the smile slips from her too soon for his liking.

“You don't think we're totally stupid, do you? Like... you said there's stuff you can't explain, either?”

Her question catches him off guard. No, there are things he can't explain (he can still see _her_ standing in the doorway to his bedroom, orange hair wild, taking shuffling steps towards him in the dark). The way Sansa's hair moved in that video the other night. A thermal video of what looked like a man standing in the doorway to one of the unused bedrooms. He can only explain noises away so many times before the excuses _house settling_ and _wind_ start to feel a little stale.

But what really shakes him is the idea that she cares what he thinks. That she doesn't want him to think she's silly or foolish for believing (he doesn't, he wants to tell her that her belief makes him feel a certain way, makes him want to believe, too, if not in ghosts than in _something_ , _anything_ ).

“I don't think you're stupid,” is what he says instead, a watered down version of the truth, but all that he can manage right now.

“Ok,” she whispers with a smile. “Good.”

* * *

There's a games room on the first floor that Arya falls in love with. It's all plush carpet and velvet chairs and dark wood. Billiards, darts, card tables.

The day Arya finds it, she forces them all to play pool with her (and she wins). Jon's not terrible at pool, but he doesn't play much. He's patient, though, and accurate (he remembers Commander Mormont nodding approvingly at his practice targets, the clean holes, dead center). But he also doesn't care much about competition, so Arya beats him soundly. Sansa is terrible and Gendry is, if possible, worse.

Tonight, Arya is currently trying to teach Gendry how to be better, trying to stand behind him and position him but she's so much shorter than him, she has to keep running from one side of him to the other to shift his arms and legs.

Sansa has decided she doesn't want to play, so Jon suggests darts, which she also doesn't like. They try cards and since she doesn't know how to play poker, they end up playing Go Fish (Jon hasn't played Go Fish since he was a child). It's kind of pointless with two people, he thinks, just them asking for cards back and forth endlessly, but she seems like she enjoys it so he just goes along.

“Literally the _whole point_ is not to sink the eight ball until the end!” Arya cries, interrupting Sansa just as she's asking for a queen (he's already told her three times he doesn't have any queens).

“But it was near the pocket,” Gendry says and points to the corner where Arya is pulling the eight ball out.

They begin to argue and Sansa makes a face at him over her hand of cards and he tries not to laugh lest he incur Arya's wrath (and he thinks, for a moment, that he _should_ feel uncomfortable; he hates when people argue in front of him, but for some reason Arya and Gendry don't bother him).

“How's Ghosts diet going?” she asks after he tells her, once again, that he has no queens.

“Terribly. Twos?” She shakes her head and he picks up a card from the pile. “I came home last night and he'd somehow managed to get onto the counter and eat an entire bag of pretzels.”

She laughs loudly at that, head thrown back and he wishes for a moment that he could laugh that freely (he wishes for a moment that he didn't always have to be so in control of himself).

“Poor Ghost,” she coos with exaggerated sympathy.

“Not poor Ghost. He's a menace and the vet said I have to make sure he maintains his weight or he could have heart issues.”

When Jon had gotten Ghost, the thing that had surprised him the most was his inability to say no to the dog. When Ghost begged for food, he'd given it. Cut to two months ago when he'd gone to Ghost's six month checkup at the vet and Ghost was gaining too much weight. Hence a diet, but now Ghost is spoiled and knows where Jon keeps all the food.

“Queens?” she asks again and he almost wants to laugh at how she will not let the queen thing go. “He's getting enough exercise, right?”

“Go fish. Yeah, I'm trying to take him out on more walks. Luckily there's a ton of trails so he doesn't get bored. Jacks?”

“Nope. Maybe you should get him a friend! Queens?”

Jon wants to sigh, but when he looks at the card he's just picked up from the pile, he sees it's a queen and he scowls as he hands it over. She grins triumphantly and puts her set of queens down.

“I'm not getting a second dog, I can barely keep control of the one I have.”

Maybe some day he'll get another dog if he has someone to help him out with them, he thinks, and the idea nearly sends him reeling. He has never _once_ had the idea of _someone else_. Not even Ygritte (somehow, he'd always known they wouldn't work; even when he thought he might stay with her, there was nothing _domestic_ about it).

He suddenly doesn't know what to do or say, his heart feels wild in his chest.

“Speaking of, I should get back and take him out,” he says, setting his cards down. “Let's say you win?”

She's frowning as he stands up to leave, but he can't think of anything else to say and so instead he says his goodbyes to Arya and Gendry and goes home.

* * *

That night he curses himself and tries not to think of the frown on her face, how upset she'd seemed over his abrupt departure. He tries not to think about getting a second dog, of someone sharing the responsibility with him. He tries not to think about what it would be like to wake up in the morning with someone curled up in his arms, arguing about who's turn it was to take them out.

* * *

He spends the next day chopping wood for the winter. He'd installed heating in the cottage, but he likes a fire during the cold months. He already has enough, probably, but it wouldn't hurt to make sure. He's _definitely_ not avoiding the inn.

It's a Sunday and they aren't filming today, so he has no reason to go up there. He definitely, absolutely, is not avoiding them ( _her_ , his traitorous mind whispers).

She keeps making him _think_ about things, keeps making him reevaluate his life. He'd been content before, he'd been fine. Work, home, sleep, do it all again the next day. Sometimes he'd go to Sam and Gilly's for dinner. Sometimes he'd go into town. Even after Val started dating someone and they'd broken it off, it hadn't bothered him too much. He'd been _fine_. Complacent.

But whenever Sansa shows up he keeps thinking about things like _getting a second dog_ and he's not sure how to deal with it. So, because he's an adult, he decides to avoid her.

* * *

She finds him just as the sun is dipping below the treeline.

He's finished chopping wood and is moving it into stacks against the north wall of the house, making sure they're raised off the ground enough so that when it snows it won't get wet. The eve of the building should keep most of the snow off the top, but he has tarps just to be safe.

He hears her before he sees her, the scuff of her boots on the trail, crunching through leaves. She's got a thermos and she holds it up like a peace offering.

“I made soup. I figured I'd repay you since you cooked for us the one night.”

He steps forward and takes the thermos from her hands with a _thanks_. He's not sure if she expects him to eat it in front of her or if she just came to deliver it, but she looks like she wants to say something else.

“Are we friends?” she says finally. There's a redness to her cheeks that he doesn't think is from the cold and she's shifting from foot to foot like she expects him to laugh and tell her leave.

Are they friends?

He doesn't have many friends. Sam. Gilly. Edd. There are other people he _likes_ , but he thinks those three are the only ones he'd actually consider _friends_ (there had been more, once, in another life, before... well, just _before_ ). Jon keeps the people close to him to a minimum, it's better for everyone. And those three, Sam, Gilly, Edd, they already know about everything and they're still here. He's not sure if Sansa would be and he's terrified to find out.

Are they friends?

He's been silent too long and he can see that she's about to run, that she expects him to say no. The honest answer is that he isn't sure, but he hates that it's upsetting her, so he finds himself saying “yeah. Yes, we're friends.”

“Yeah?” she breathes, seeming to deflate with the tension that leaves her body and he knows he's said the right thing (for once, he may have done the right thing).

Before he really has time to think it through, he says “I'm starving, and it's freezing out here. Wanna come inside? I'll make you some coffee or something.”

She nods eagerly and he ignores the part of his brain that asks if this is a good idea or not as he opens the door for her and lets her inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> friends is def the end goal here, right?
> 
> last chapter: a riveting description of watching video
> 
> this chapter: a riveting description of Go Fish
> 
> (I don't know what this story has turned into but I think I may have lost my mind this week at work and this is what's happened)


	7. in which a box is opened

He eats the soup like he's starving and she takes a strange sort of pleasure in this. He seems to like it (she's not much of a cook, but she followed the recipe to a T, wanting desperately for it to be good). He'd started the coffee before eating and when it beeps, she waves him back to his seat and gets it herself. He doesn't have creamer but she loads it with sugar to make up for it.

When he's done, he sits back in his chair and rests a hand on his stomach and says “that was good, thanks,” and she feels triumphant.

Now, though, now that he's done eating, they're just sitting at his little table, her with a mug of coffee and him with his can of beer (some brand she's never heard of, but then again she doesn't really drink beer). The silence stretches out between them, fifteen minutes of comfortable domesticity turned into something _else_.

Every nerve in her body is thrumming. The last time she was here, he kissed her, right in this kitchen, and from the way he's scratching at his beard and not making eye contact with her, she guesses he's also thinking about it.

She wants him to kiss her again, but they _just_ promised to be friends and that feels important. She gets the sense that Jon doesn't make friends easily (or, she supposes, she gets the sense that Jon doesn't _let himself_ make friends easily). She doesn't want to ruin it by throwing herself at him, no matter how attracted to him she is (and she _is_ , she can't even try to deny it anymore. She's more attracted to him than she's been to anyone else in her life, in a way she didn't even think was possible). To get her mind off of it, she takes a look around the place. The last time she was here, she didn't really get a good look.

There's an old couch and a small TV on a stand. A shelf of paperback books on the opposite wall and she knows that if she goes over there, she'll find all the spines cracked and that _kills_ her a little inside. Besides that, there isn't much else, he doesn't seem to be one for decorations, it's all very utilitarian, except for an old wooden trunk in the corner that she makes her way over to.

“This is beautiful,” she murmurs, running her hand over the wood. It looks like something she would buy at an antique store for decoration, something old and artfully placed in a room. In Jon's house, though, it's not meant to be _cute_ and _trendy_.

“It was my mom's,” he gives it a fond look and it makes her heart stutter in a way she wishes it wouldn't. “She used to keep extra blankets in it or something when I was a kid. Now it's pretty much all I have left from before.”

“Before?”

“The Watch. I left home and couldn't take anything besides what could fit in one bag. I left that trunk with a friend, he managed to keep it the five years I spent there.”

“So it's like stuff from your mom or stuff from your childhood?” She's curious. She wants to open it, she wants to dig through it, like it will give her some insight into him, like it will give her the key to unlocking that piece of him he keeps locked away.

“A little of both.” To her surprise, he stands from the table and comes over and kneels down, setting his beer on the coffee table and then gently unsnapping the heavy metal clasps. The lid creaks as it opens and she tries not to stand on her tiptoes to see over his shoulder.

He sits like that for a moment, silent, kneeling in front of the trunk before he lets out a breathy laugh and reaches in and pulls out an old stuffed dog. The fur is matted down with use, one of the beady plastic eyes is missing. “Max,” he gives the dog's head an absentminded pet. “I haven't looked in here in... probably since I got it back.” Which means six or seven years, she thinks.

“He's adorable,” she kneels down cautiously next to him, trying to move slow so she doesn't spook him, like he's a skittish animal that will run at the first sign of _feelings_.

“Mom won him at a fair,” he explains. “We used to go to this annual fair near Long Lake...”

“I remember that!” she exclaims and immediately regrets interrupting him. He so rarely talks and here she is, cutting in. But he turns to look at her finally and gives her a small smile that lifts one corner of his mouth.  
  


“Yeah?”

“Yeah, mom and dad took us one year, before Rickon was born. I remember they had this giant slide...”

“I used to go on that over and over again,” his smile gets bigger and starts to crinkle the corners of his eyes and she thinks that he's beautiful when he smiles.

“Robb loved it, too.” Her voice falters and Jon's smile slips a bit, so she takes a deep breath and turns back to Max. “How'd he lose an eye?”

“Unclear,” he holds Max up to study him. “One day it was just gone.”

Just then Ghost nudges between them and noses at the stuffed dog in Jon's hand and Sansa lets out an undignified snort (she's horrified, but Jon starts to laugh, too).

“I think he's jealous.”

“Definitely jealous,” Jon puts Max back in the trunk and shoos Ghost away and that's when Sansa gets a good look inside. There's obvious things like a hockey mask and some old paperback kids books (The Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, _mysteries_ ) and a few folders filled with paperwork. Then there's other things she can't begin to identify what they mean – a pair of gloves that are too big for a child but too small for his hands, a small, intricately carved wooden box, a mason jar of what looks like beads or buttons. It all seems so personal, she won't ask. Instead her eyes move to a small stack of VHS tapes and she lets out an excited gasp and lunges forward before she can stop herself.

“I love this movie!”

She pulls out a copy of _The Fool_ and she knows there's a huge dumb grin on her face, but she can't help it. She remembers renting this with mom when she was young, they sat on the couch and sighed over how romantic it was and how perfect Jaime Lannister's hair was. She remembers having to cover her eyes during the fight scenes, terrified that harm would befall Florian as he fought his way to rescue his beloved Jonquil (she doesn't care that the movie doesn't follow the plot of the _actual_ story, it was still wonderful).

When she turns to look at him, she's sure that he'd be giving her an eye roll like Arya always does, but instead he's staring at the tape in her hands and the tips of his ears are tinged red and she's not sure what to make of that. She turns to look at the rest of the tapes and... well, the majority seem to be Jaime Lannister action movies from nearly two decades ago. Some of them are definite boy movies, but _The Fool_ is absolutely not. She thought it was his mom's at first, but with the way he's scratching at the back of his neck, she's beginning to think it's _his._ The thought nearly ruins her, the idea that he likes her favorite movie and doesn't think it's stupid or silly or too girly. She bites at her lip to keep herself from saying something, though. It's one thing for him to be a romantic at heart, but she's not sure how he'll react if she points it out. Maybe someday she'll be able to tease him about it, but right now this friendship between them is too new, too tentative.

(S _omeday?_ a voice in her head asks and she realizes that yes, she hopes there is a someday. She realizes that she wants to know Jon for a very long time.)

“I haven't seen it in ages,” she says instead, in what she thinks is a very steady voice, thank you very much. She puts the tape back into the chest and when she does this, she notices a balaclava tucked into the corner. With a smile, she pulls it out and holds it up. “Planning on robbing a bank?”

It was meant as a joke, but his face pales and she regrets it immediately. He was in the Watch, _stupid_ , she thinks. It's probably from the Watch, and he _clearly_ has bad memories. She let her guard down, let herself think they were just two friends going through a box of things. She's ruined it, he's going to close off now.

He eases out of his kneeling position and sits cross legged on the floor, hand coming up automatically to take the black mask from her. When it's in his hands, it strikes her that it's somewhat small, probably too small for him. He holds it in his lap, face up, and he stares at it like he's looking for something in it.

She's about to apologize, but he speaks first.

“What was it like, when you saw your mom?”

The question catches her off guard and for a moment she doesn't know what he means. She's filled with memories of her mother at a fair, watching movies on the couch. It take a moment to remember _it_.

“I didn't know what was happening at first,” she says slowly. “I went down to get a drink of water and mom was just standing there and I knew she couldn't possibly be, but she _was_.” He's still staring down at the balaclava in his hands and she's thankful as she slips into the memory. “It didn't feel off right away, but then little things... she didn't move at first, she wouldn't answer me. And then when she did move it wasn't... it wasn't _normal_. Her face wasn't right.” The last part comes out a whisper. It's what she hates the most – that the last memory she has of her mother is that pale face with it's mouth open in a twisted, silent scream.

She doesn't know what else to say or how else to describe it so they sit in silence for a while, her trying to keep her fidgeting to a minimum and him staring down at the mask.

“I was undercover with the Wildlings,” he says and waves the balaclava slightly.

She stifles a small gasp. She's heard of the Wildlings, _everyone_ in the North has. She was just a kid, but she remembers them. Even down as far from the Wall as Winterfell, the whispers came. A group of terrorists fighting the Watch for generations. She remembers her mom and dad watching news stories about it with grim faces – the bombing of a building, the killing of civilians. And the Watch, heroes to protect them. She's old enough now to realize that she doesn't actually know _anything_ real about the Wildlings – who they are, what they're fighting for. She's old enough to realize that most of what she does know is likely propaganda. From the way Jon reacts whenever the Watch is mentioned, she thinks that most of what she knows about _them_ is likely propaganda too, and the idea turns her stomach. _The almighty Watch._

“I was supposed to be a deserter,” he continues. “Disillusioned with the Watch, running away. Couldn't go south because they'd catch me, had to go north. _Stumbled into_ a Wildling camp. I'm lucky they didn't shoot me on sight.” He gives a little laugh and she's horrified. It sounds like the Watch sent him into near certain death on the _hope_ that he wouldn't get killed immediately. “I guess I'm a good actor.” It's supposed to be a joke but it lands flat and neither of them even pretend to laugh. “They didn't trust me right away, but they did eventually.” The bitterness in his voice nearly takes her breath away. “I met a girl, her name was Ygritte.”

Sansa's eyes go to the mask in his hands and it clicks in her head; it's too small for _him_. It's a woman's size.

“She's the reason they trusted me. They trusted her, and _she_ trusted me.”

Usually he's expressionless, a blank mask that she tries desperately to read, so the open sorrow on his face feels raw.

“You loved her.”

She's not sure if it's a question or a statement and she's not sure if she wants it to be true or not, because she knows, somehow, with absolute certainty, that Ygritte is dead.

He's silent for a moment and she watches the muscles in his jaw tic, his hands clenching and unclenching around the balaclava.

“I'm not sure,” he answers finally, shoulders slumping a bit. “I spent nearly two years with them. _Two years_ pretending to be a different person. I think I _became_ him. I'm not sure if I loved her or if he did. I'm not even sure if it _was_ a different person, or if it was the real me.” He gives a short, humorless laugh. “So much of what they said made sense. There was a time, I...” he takes a deep breath, “I decided to stay. I decided to really leave the Watch and join them. They had me.”

“What changed?” she prompts when he goes silent, the words hanging in the air, she thinks if she said them any louder they'd break whatever spell he's under, whatever memory has him trapped.

“We were in a town south of the Wall, not actually too far from Last Hearth. Our schools used to play each other in Little League. I was with a small group and we needed supplies. Usually they only steal from big stores, corporations. It's one of their _things_. It makes them feel better about it, stealing from the rich and all that. But it was such a small town, there were no big stores. We were in this mom and pop grocery and just taking _everything_ and this old man comes out with a rifle and tells us to get out of his store. I remember wanting to tell him to run, not to be an idiot. He was one old man against a group of heavily armed rebels, what was he _thinking_.”

He's so lost in thought now, he seems so far away, his hands gripping the balaclava so tight she thinks he'll tear it in half.

“She shot him in the head. Just... and she didn't even care. He was one of _them_ , didn't matter he was a civilian. Didn't matter that he was trying to defend his business.”

Sansa can feel her stomach churning, her heart beating so loud in her own ears it's a wonder he can't hear it.

“I ran away that night, after I thought everyone was asleep. I couldn't take it anymore. She came after me though, I guess she figured it out. She was so angry, I thought she was going to kill me. She couldn't do it. She kept the gun on me for so long, but she couldn't do it. And then I went back to the Watch.”

He doesn't elaborate on how he got back to the Watch, how he got out of the Wildling camp with no one else noticing. She supposes it doesn't matter. She supposes that's not the point.

Before she can stop herself, she reaches out and her hand grips his wrist, right above the balaclava bunched in his hands. He looks up at her and there's a strange sort of openness to his expression.

“I shouldn't be telling you any of this,” he breathes and she curses herself for interrupting him. He looks horrified that he'd spoken so much.

“It's ok,” she tightens her hand on his wrist and she feels it relax under her and the balaclava slips from his grip. Something shifts in her mind, slides into place. “Jon,” her hand moves from his wrist and she twines her fingers with his. He looks down at their joined hands but doesn't pull away. “What does my mom have to do with this?”

He hesitates for a moment. “The night you left, the night after we...” he doesn't finish the sentence but he doesn't need to, she feels the whisper of it on her lips. “I think I saw her.”

“Ygritte,” she says and she feels her heart rate speed up. She's staring at him, she knows, but she can't help it. He _saw_ one. “You agreed to the show because of it.”

He nods. “I still don't...” he trails off and she can tell he's not sure. He doesn't _want_ to believe. She won't push him, not when he's so distraught over it.

It feels like hours, years, that they sit on the floor with her hand in his. It's Ghost that finally breaks them out of it, scratching at the front door and needing to go out. Jon moves to stand and she lets his hand go and gets up as well. He looks at his unfinished beer on the side table and picks it up with a grimace.

“Warm,” he says and takes it into the kitchen to dump it. Her coffee is cold and she follows suit. “Come on, I'll walk you back.”

He leashes Ghost and she shrugs into her coat and wishes she wasn't leaving. She wants to sit on the couch and watch old movies with him and drink his cheap beer. She wants to stay up all night and talk, she wants to know everything about him. But she won't push it. They're still new to this and he's spoken more in the past hour than he has in the entire time she's known him (she wonders how many others know this story. Sam? Gilly? His therapist? Edd?)

They walk slowly through the woods, the moonlight filtering through the trees is weak and she's thankful he's with her, he seems to know the trail by heart. She shouldn't push it, but her curiosity gets the best of her and the words rush out of her before she can stop them.

“Can I ask how she died?” He tenses up next to her and she turns towards him, eyes wide. “Sorry, _gods_ , you don't have to answer that.”

He doesn't look angry, though. Ghost runs off into the woods to do his business and they stop walking. “I can't tell you,” he doesn't look at her when he says it. “I don't know why, but I really don't want you to hate me.”

She's not sure what to say to that. There's a part of her that's rejoicing over the fact that he seems to care about her opinion of him, but she tries to push that down. That's not what's important right now (but oh, the silly little girl that lives inside her is celebrating, swooning, planning their wedding).

“What if I promise that I won't?” Her voice is steady and even and she's proud of herself. He gives her a _look_ and a short, disbelieving laugh.

“You will.”

She shakes her head, sets her mouth in her most determined frown and he watches her for a moment before sighing and he turns to look back towards the woods where Ghost is rustling around.

“I convinced the Watch to negotiate with the Wildlings.” This is news to Sansa, she's never heard of any negotiations and as far as she knows, they're still fighting, though the Wildlings have definitely been losing ground in recent years. “I was so smug,” he lets out another laugh, this time with a tinge of bitterness to it. “I thought I could sort out _decades_ of fighting.”

Out in the woods, Ghost is sniffing around the base of a tree. Sansa can feel dread pooling in her stomach again and she wonders if she _wants_ to hear the rest.

“I got both sides to agree to a meeting. Tormund – he was one of the leaders – he didn't trust the Watch, but I convinced them it was safe. I _promised_ them. They showed up for peace talks and the Watch just... it happened before I even realized. It was so quick.”

Sansa knows she can be naïve, but the idea that a government installation like the Watch could slaughter an entire group of people under the pretense of peace talks is... it's _unthinkable_. She feels nauseous.

“They gave me a medal for it,” he laughs, still bitter and with a slight edge of disbelief. Bile rises in her throat and she swallows against it. Jon doesn't look at her and starts walking again, tugging Ghost away from whatever he'd been investigating.

When they reach the end of the trail and the inn is in sight, he stops again and waves off towards the building, like he's telling her to go. She doesn't want to go, but she can see that all of this has taken something from him, he looks _exhausted_. He's retreating into himself and she can tell he wants her to leave.

She can't leave it like this, though, so she takes a step forward and he turns to finally look at her when he realizes how close she is. With one hand on his arm for balance, she leans up and presses her lips to his cheek and he freezes in place. When she pulls away, she looks him straight in the eye and says “I don't hate you.”

She waits until he nods before she steps back and then heads off to the inn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (happy official start of spooky season, though I live it all year long)


	8. in which Jon might be paranoid

Jon lays awake for the rest of the night and stares at the ceiling above his bed and _thinks_.

He can't believe he told her. Not just because he opened up, shared his past. He can't believe he told her, in his home, where the Watch knows he lives. He keeps his technology to a minimum but he has a cell phone. Maybe he's paranoid, to think they might be listening, but he remembers the year after _it_ happened, the year he still had left on his contract. He remembers the constant fear, looking over his shoulder, pretending to be a perfect soldier, following every order with no question so they'd have no reason to terminate him (and if he's being honest, they wouldn't have started with him. No, they would've started with his friends. With Sam, with Gilly. Edd, Pyp, Grenn.)

It's been seven years since he left. Seven years of never talking about it, never saying anything bad about the Watch. When they'd sent him to therapy (some program designed to make outsiders think _look how well they treat their soldiers_ ), he'd kept his mouth shut about the incident. He didn't trust a Watch-mandated therapist.

The only people who know are the ones who'd _been there_. Sam had watched it happen on surveillance (Jon remembers seeing him later that night, Sam's pale face, his shaking hands). Edd had been part of the cleanup crew (the haunted look in his eyes, seeming lost for weeks after). Gilly hadn't been there, but he knows Sam told her about a month later (the secret had been eating him alive).

No, he shouldn't have told her, but there's something about Sansa that makes him _talk_ , he doesn't know what it is. For all that his attraction to her throws him off, there's also something about her that calms him. There's something about her belief, about her kindness and openness that makes him want to be open, too.

He tells himself that what he told her in the house, near his phone, it wasn't anything damning. In fact, it was more of a condemnation of the Wildlings than the Watch. He hadn't told her about the mass killing until after, when they'd been walking through the woods and he knows he left his cell inside. But she knows now, for better or worse (and she hadn't run away).

He feels exposed and raw, but it's not necessarily an unpleasant feeling. The last time he'd felt this way was the first time the Starks had been here and he remembers hating the feeling, but this is different. He feels raw and open but also lighter somehow (he feels the ghost of her lips on his cheek).

She didn't push about Ygritte's ghost, which surprises him, but he's thankful for it. He's still not sure what to make of it, if he even really believes. He _was_ exhausted that night, it's perfectly reasonable for his tired mind to conjure her while he was still feeling guilty about kissing Sansa.

And why now? If it was actually her ghost, why wait this long; she's been dead for nearly eight years, why choose that moment? Because he kissed another girl and felt something for the first time? The idea seems ridiculous. What, was she coming to haunt him to make him feel even _more_ guilty? He doesn't need Ygritte for that, he can manage guilt just fine on his own.

* * *

The next day he's exhausted. His muscles ache from chopping wood and he feels drained from talking so much and not sleeping. He yawns through Brienne's daily meeting, though he tries to hide it, and he can see Sansa shooting him worried looks the whole time. Sam and Gilly seem to be doing the same and after the meeting breaks, they pull him into the office.

“Are you not sleeping again?” Gilly frowns, hands on hips as Sam sits at the desk to start on paperwork.

“Had a rough night,” he shrugs and Gilly sighs. He can tell she wants to pry and it makes his chest feel warm, how much she cares, how much Sam cares. After everything they know about him, they've stuck around; through the Watch, through his failure, through years of guilt, through his silences and his anger. They put up with his bullshit and he's never sure why.

Without really thinking it through, he pulls out one of Sam's notepads and a pen and writes. Gilly wants to know why he hasn't slept and he could lie, he could keep it to himself, but he finds he doesn't want to. Telling Sansa last night, the weight on his shoulders lifted ever so slightly, he wonders if this is what it's like to just tell people how you feel.

When he gives the notepad to them, he sees Sam's face pale and Gilly inhales sharply.

_I told Sansa about the Watch_

Sam looks at him and nods and when Jon glances over at Gilly, there's a softness to her eyes and a small smile curling her lips up. She reaches over and takes his hand and squeezes it as Sam rips the top three layers of the notebook out, takes a lighter out of the desk, and burns the paper over the trashcan until he finally blows out the finals bits (and Jon thinks perhaps his paranoia isn't so misguided).

* * *

“You sure you're ok to do this?” Sansa asks as they walk down the hallway on the third floor. Tonight they're going back to Alys's attic, as the Starks have come to call it. “You seem really tired.”

He can tell she knows why, he can see the uncertainty in her eyes. She thinks he regrets it.

“It was just a lot last night,” he finds himself saying.

“I'm glad you told me,” she stops walking and reaches out and lightly grabs his wrist. He stops, too, and turns to face her. She looks so earnest, he feels like he can read every emotion on her face (a feat for him, he's never been good with emotions, but with her it seems so easy).

“Yeah, me too,” he clears his throat and looks past her at the wall (he's _trying_ , but he can't bring himself to look at her while he's telling her things). Out of his periphery, he can see her mouth stretch into a smile and he can feel her fingers tighten around his wrist slightly. He wonders if she can feel his pulse, if it's really as erratic as he thinks.

_I don't hate you I don't hate you I don't hate you_

He realizes they've just been standing here in the hall with her smiling like the sun at him and him trying to look anywhere that isn't at her. She doesn't seem to be in any hurry to continue and just like last night, he feels her hand slip from his wrist and down to wind her fingers through his. He doesn't think he's in much of a hurry, either.

He wants to kiss her, he thinks, but he remembers last night, how she wanted to be _friends_ with him. How clearly uncomfortable she'd been in his kitchen where he'd practically attacked her last year (though he swears, he _swears_ she kissed back). And every instinct in him is screaming that she'd kiss back now, but he doesn't want to ruin this thing they have. He can't say he's great with women – he's slept with three in his life and none of them had been particularly romantic. Ygritte, Val, and some girl in Mole's Town a month after Ygritte was killed (he'd been so drunk he doesn't remember her name or even what she looks like).

Sansa's different. She isn't a mission, they aren't constantly on the verge of death and grasping at each other for any bit of comfort and stability. She isn't the girl in Mole's Town, him trying to forget himself in another person for one night. She isn't Val, a casual way to pass the time, a mutually beneficial arrangement. No, Sansa is... he's not sure what she is, he just knows it's _different._ And if she just wants to be friends, well, that's what they'll be.

Except... _except_ she's leaning forward now, eyes focused on his lips and he may be an idiot sometimes, but he's not _blind_. She's moving so slowly it seems like she barely realizes she's doing it, pupils dilated, mouth parted ever so slightly.

Fuck it, he thinks as he closes the distance between them. She inhales sharply when his lips meet hers and for a moment he thinks he's wildly misread this, but then she's relaxing into him and the hand that isn't still holding his comes up and winds it's way into his hair.

His own hand finds the small of her back and he drags her to him and she makes another small noise that nearly undoes him. She feels so _right_ against him, he has to stop himself from walking her back and pressing her against the wall. She tastes like hot chocolate and she feels like everything that's right with the world (she feels like a light in the dark, like the sun finally breaking over the horizon). She feels like-

Down the hall, a door slams shut and they break apart and she stumbles back until she hits the wall, hand flying up to press over her heart. Panting, they both turn in the direction of the noise and he says, voice low, “you think someone saw us?”

When he looks back at her, her eyes are wide and she fumbles in her bag for the walkie-talkie and she pulls it out and clicks it on.

“Hey, is anyone up on the third floor?”

They wait as the others buzz in, negatives all around. Sansa gives him a look and Jon can feel a tension starting in his shoulders, cold creeping down his spine.

“Are you sure?” she asks again. “Third floor.”

“You're alone up there,” Pod's voice comes through and Jon can see Sansa's hand begin to shake a bit. “I'm at the surveillance bay right now.”

Jon grabs the walkie out of her hands. “You're watching us?” Beside him, Sansa gasps, eyes going wide as she realizes.

There's a pause before Pod's voice comes back on, hesitant. “Yup.”

“And you don't see anyone else up here,” Jon keeps his voice level and calm, he can tell Sansa is starting to panic.

“No one else. Just, uh... you two.”

“Fuck,” Jon breathes, running his hand over his face. Sansa grabs the walkie back from him.

“Pod,” she says sweetly into the walkie, “could you come up here for a minute? We have a question to ask.”

“Um,” Pod's voice is nearly a squeak, “I think I should stay here?”

Sansa looks around the hall and finally sees the camera mounted in the corner. She turns to it and gives it her best smile, “Pod, really, just come on up.”

“What's going on?” Brienne's voice cuts in.

“Are you ok?” Arya's comes in right after.

Jon takes the walkie from her. “Sansa thinks our thermal isn't working, she wants Pod to come up and take a look at it.”

Sansa shoots him a grateful look (it seems like he hasn't lost his touch, after all these years he's still a good liar).

“Doesn't Bran usually handle the equipment?” Arya asks.

“Damnit Arya,” Sansa mutters.

“Bran's got enough to do, we figured we wouldn't bother him,” Jon says through the walkie.

“I'll come up,” Bran says. “That's so weird, the thermal was working yesterday.”

* * *

With Bran around, they have no choice but to continue the investigation. As they sit in the attic, as Sansa asks questions to the empty air, Jon's anxiety over Pod catching them turns into something else.

No one had been with them on the third floor.

_It was the wind_.

It was the wind. The wind had slammed that door shut.

_None of the windows are open_.

Something curdles in his stomach that feels a lot like fear.

_The wind had slammed the door shut. The wind had slammed the door shut._

He repeats it in his head like a mantra, _yells_ it in his head to keep anything else out. He won't think it, he won't entertain the idea. It wasn't _her_.

* * *

When they're finally done, he makes his way to the surveillance bay (which is actually just a first floor guest room where they have two monitors set up so someone can watch live and catch anything that happens. Usually Pod or Bran or Meera man the station).

When he enters the room (with a little more force than needed, probably), Pod stands quickly from the desk and plants himself in front of it. Jon feels Sansa's hand on his arm and she pulls him back slightly. He's thrumming with anger, every bit of him tense (he understands that its not really anger, it's fear, but anger has always been easier for him).

“Pod, can we...” Sansa starts, but Bran is right behind them and he enters. By this time, everyone else has apparently decided to meet them here and are crowding at the entrance to the room. Pod still stands protectively in front of the surveillance station.

“What are you doing?” Brienne asks with a frown.

“My job,” Pod's voice barely wavers and he looks Jon square in the eye (the kid has balls, Jon will give him that). “I can't erase that tape.”

Next to him, Sansa groans and puts her face in her hands, she seems to understand what will happen next before it happens.

“Erase?” Bran asks, with Meera and Arya and Brienne chiming in with similar questions.

Soon they're all insisting on watching _the tape_ and Sansa slumps onto the bed and flops back. She seems to think there's no arguing with them and when Jon looks over at them, now huddling around the monitors, he thinks he agrees. He might be able to take on Pod, but Gendry is huge (though Jon doesn't think he's much of a fighter) and Arya would absolutely pummel him and if he's being honest, he thinks Brienne might be able to beat him in a fight.

Not that he _wants_ to fight any of them, but he and Sansa haven't even been able to talk about it yet, the last thing he wants is the rest of them meddling.

He sits on the edge of the bed as well. He can't see the monitor from here, not with six people huddled around the displays, but he can hear Arya murmur _what are we watching_ and then silence for a while and then a collective gasp. Jon props his elbows on his knees and rests his head in his hands and behind him, Sansa rolls onto her stomach and presses her face into a pillow.

“Snow!” Arya snaps, “why are you manhandling my sister.”

“I wasn't...” he starts as Sansa turns back over.

“Arya! He wasn't _manhandling_ me.”

“Yeah, she looked pretty into it,” Gendry contemplates the monitor screen, and when Jon looks, he can see it paused. The camera is down the hall from where they were, but it is _very_ clear what they're doing.

“Gross,” Bran says without much inflection, like he's not sure he actually means it but it's something he needs to say as her little brother.

“I think it's sweet,” Meera leans up against the wall next to the monitor and gives him and Sansa an appraising look.

“Hold on,” Arya grumbles and moves forward with her phone and snaps a picture of the monitor.

“Arya!” Sansa cries, scrambling off the bed and Jon watches her try to grab the phone out of Arya's hands, but Bran gets in her way and blocks her.

“There,” Arya says with satisfaction as she types something. Within seconds her phone buzzes. “Gilly says _'aw_ ' with like a thousand heart eye emojis. She doesn't seem surprised?”

“This is a disaster,” Jon sighs.

“I'm so sorry,” Sansa breathes, leaving Arya's side and coming over to him. “Anything with my family is...”

“We aren't a disaster!” Bran gasps.

“The only thing that would've made this _worse_ is if Rickon were here!” Sansa huffs, throwing her hands up.

“Oh, thanks for reminding me,” Arya takes out her phone again and types out another message. Again, within seconds, her phone is buzzing and whatever's on the screen makes Arya cackle.

“Gods,” Sansa breaths and sits back on the bed next to him. “I'm sorry...” she sounds so upset and she can't look at him, like she's afraid of his reaction.

To his surprise, he laughs. It starts slow and then builds until he's laughing harder than he has in a _very_ long time (he understands it's part a release of tension more than any actual humor, but still). When he looks over at Sansa, she looks unsure, like she's still expecting him to be angry with her.

“Well, you guys are never boring, I'll give you that,” he finally says and Bran breaks out into a grin and Arya is still cackling at whatever's on her phone. Gendry's mouth is tipped into a smile and Meera is rolling her eyes, but she seems to be smiling, too. Brienne watches it all like she can't decide if they're insane or not.

Pod clears his throat. “So um, I didn't show you guys that just to out them,” he waves in Jon and Sansa's direction. “I wanted to show you cause of what happens next.”

Jon's amusement twists into something darker and the others quiet down and turn back to where Pod unpauses the video (and if he weren't so anxious, Jon would be horrified at how long the kiss goes on, he's thankful the camera is as far away as it was). There's the slamming door, and he watches video Jon and Sansa jump apart and look around. He watches video Sansa say something into her walkie. Pod pauses the video.

“Ok, now I looked around a bit and....” he switches to another camera feed. It's in another hall around the corner and he queues it up and begins to play. Everything is normal until one of the doors about a quarter of the way down the hall slams shut so forcefully, Jon feels any _wind_ argument die in his throat.

“Shit,” Bran breathes, taking control of the computer and winding the video back. “Jon, any ghosts here not like you?”

“There's no such thing as ghosts,” Jon hears himself say, the words come out hoarse, his throat feels unnaturally dry.

_It's not her. There are no ghosts_.

When he finally turns to look at Sansa, she's staring at him and he can tell she's thinking it too.

_Ygritte_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two posts in one day? Well, yes, because I've had the drabbles written for a while now and I have zero self control.


	9. in which Sansa goes to town

_Dear Diary, I like this guy but his ex-girlfriend is a ghost who doesn't want us to be together_.

She's honestly not sure how she ended up in this situation; her mind is reeling, her thoughts keep spinning from joy to fear.

Jon kissed her and it was better than she remembers (better, she thinks, because she didn't feel horrifically guilty this time). It's a relief to know she isn't completely crazy, that there _is_ something between them, that she wasn't just making it up. She knows she has a tendency to romanticize things, but this is _real_.

And as much as she doesn't want to, she can't help but think that Ygritte's ghost is also real.

She doesn't want it to be. Jon's already haunted by his past, _why_ does it have to be literal? For the first time in her life, she doesn't want it to be a ghost. For the first time in her life, she wants it to be the wind, the house settling, all the excuses she used to wave away. The kiss has made her realize that she wants Jon and she's not sure she can have him if the ghost of his ex-girlfriend is meddling. How can he move on when he's constantly reminded of the past?

She could see it in Jon's face that he'd been thinking it, too, and that almost scares her more than the idea itself. That Jon might _believe_ makes it harder to ignore.

There's a knock on her door, it's probably Arya come to gloat that she'd called it a year ago when they were first here. Sansa sighs and gets up and opens the door to...

Nothing.

Heart in her throat, she steels herself and leans out of the doorway and looks down the hall in each direction.

Nothing.

Her hands shake as she closes the door and locks it and she tries not to _run_ back to her bed where she gets under the covers. She's just picking up her phone when another knock sounds and she startles so hard, her phone jolts out of her hand and slides off the side of the bed.

“Who is it?” she asks, not taking her eyes off the door.

Nothing.

“Arya, if that's you, I swear this _isn't_ the time, ok?”

Nothing.

Arya. She needs Arya.

Jon went back to his house for the night (promising her with a whisper in her ear that they'd talk tomorrow after they'd gotten some sleep. She'd been disappointed, she wonders if he's already regretting it, if he's trying to think up the best way to let her down).

With shaking hands she reaches over the side of the bed. This is a nightmare, she thinks, eyes on her phone which is laying under the bed, the edge of it just poking out. The last thing she wants to be doing is reaching under her bed in a haunted inn in the dead of night after _nothing_ keeps knocking at her door.

Her fingertips brush her phone and there's another knock and she holds her breath as she grabs her phone and sits upright, eyes back on the door. When she doesn't answer, there's another knock and her heart slams against her ribs as she unlocks her phone and calls Arya.

It rings and rings and Sansa can feel tears well up in her eyes.

Nothing knocks again, louder and more insistent, rattling the door in it's frame.

She hangs up and dials Gendry, who answers blearily on the third ring with a gruff _hello_.

“Gendry,” she whispers, barely able to speak around the fear that lodges in her throat. “Help.”

Whatever he hears in her voice, it wakes him up immediately and she can hear him shake Arya awake in the background. He stays on the phone with her as they make their way to her (why, _why_ are their rooms so far apart? They'd taken some of the most haunted rooms at the inn and that means that Sansa's room is in the east wing. Bran and Meera's is in the west wing, and Gendry and Arya's is in the east, too, but a floor below. She's never felt more alone in her entire life).

The knocking hadn't continued since Gendry answered and what feels like an eternity later, Arya calls through the door and Sansa practically leaps out of bed and unlocks the door and throws it open. When she sees Arya's concerned face, she falls apart into sobs and flings herself at Arya and she feels Arya tense up in surprise (Sansa might be more emotional than the others, but she's always been the adult, the mom, the one who deals with everyone else's tantrums. She rarely breaks down like this, rarely loses her composure so completely).

Through her tears and stuttering breaths, she manages to tell them what happened. Arya scowls and tells her she's staying in their room tonight and she goes into the room and starts gathering blankets and a pillow as Gendry slings one heavy arm around her shoulders.

By the time they get back to Arya and Gendry's room, she's calmed down enough that she's no longer violently shivering and Gendry pulls their blanket and his pillow off the queen bed and piles it on the floor in front of the door. Sansa protests weakly but he waves her off and Arya throws Sansa's blanket and pillow onto the bed and they both get in (she knows it's silly, but Gendry sleeping like a guard in front of the door makes her feel safe, even though she knows, practically, that ghosts are incorporeal and could get through anyway).

It takes forever to fall asleep, Arya curled to her side (like she used to do when they were young, when Arya would have nightmares and would come to her room and climb into bed with her at night. In the mornings Arya would pretend it never happened).

She eventually falls into an uneasy sleep and dreams of a woman in a tower, of longing and fear and despair.

* * *

The next morning is a quiet affair.

They meet Bran and Meera in the kitchen and Arya tells them what happened. Bran looks horrified, Meera angry. It almost makes her cry again, but she doesn't.

She doesn't tell them about Ygritte. Maybe she should, but it's not her story to tell, it's Jon's and she won't tell them. Especially not here, where there are cameras and mics to pick up everything that happens.

She wonders if Jon took Ghost for his early morning walk; she wasn't on the wraparound porch to see them. She wonders if he wonders where she was. She wonders if he thinks she's avoiding him.

Sam and Gilly show up before Jon makes an appearance and Gilly seems to notice the tension right away. Arya begins to explain to Sam and Gilly about the slamming door after the kiss, about what happened last night.

“I've never heard of knocking before,” Gilly muses. “Footsteps and slamming doors, sure. But never _knocking_.”

Brienne and Pod eventually show up and Sansa thinks they should have waited until the daily briefing to tell the story, because this is the third time Arya's had to repeat herself. She's just finishing up when Jon appears, looking like he hasn't slept either and it does nothing to calm her down.

Arya gives him the same story and Sansa watches his face close off. She thinks she can read him and he seems _furious_. He's silent for a while and Sansa finds herself on edge, waiting, _waiting_ for him to say something.

He doesn't say anything and her heart sinks. Eventually Brienne starts to talk about what they'll do that day, but Sansa can tell she's just trying to fill the silence.

* * *

They decide to watch the video. In the control room, they sit around the monitors. Sansa sits on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, with Arya and Bran sat on either side of her. Jon stands against the far wall with his arms folded across his chest. He hasn't spoken once and Sansa thinks if he clenches his jaw any tighter, he'll crack his teeth.

Her room doesn't have audio, one of the decisions they'd made. It was one thing to have cameras in their bedrooms, it was another to have audio. So far, it hadn't seemed worth the annoyance of having to change in the bathroom, but now she's thankful the cameras were there. She needs to see it, she realizes. She needs proof that it happened.

Because there's no audio in her bedroom, Pod finds the nearest hallway mic and queues it up to play at the same time as her bedroom video.

It's strange enough to watch herself on camera when she knows she's being filmed, but just like last night with the kiss, this feels incredibly private and invasive. She watches herself get ready for bed, she goes into the bathroom and comes out in her pajamas and she flops down dramatically on the bed. Sansa knows that she's thinking about Jon, thinking about Ygritte, thinking about the slamming door. None of the others know (though she wonders if Jon can guess).

Eventually, a distant knock sounds from the audio down the hall and video Sansa looks over at her door with a sigh, gets out of bed, and answers it to nothing.

Pod pauses the video and opens up the nearby hallway cameras and queues it to the time and plays it. One of the cameras is a long shot of the hall, her door practically on the opposite end, and she watches it open. There really had been nothing there (though she knows there wouldn't be. Arya might like to tease her, but she's not cruel. Even if it had started as a prank, there's no way she would have let it go on this long).

The tension in the room is nearly unbearable as Pod starts her room video again and she watches herself scramble back into bed. There's another distant knock and she drops her phone. She hears a few of the others inhale as they watch her grope under the bed for her phone, as the knocking grows louder and more insistent, as she calls first Arya then Gendry, as she sits in the middle of her bed until Arya and Gendry finally appear in one of the hallway cams, Arya storming down the hall. She wishes with all her might that Pod had stopped it there, but he doesn't and she has to watch herself sob and cling to Arya.

“I'll go through the rest of the night,” Pod says in the silence afterwards. “See if anything else happens near your room. You don't have to be here for it.”

It's a kind gesture, one she appreciates.

“Why don't we take the day off?” Brienne suggests and she appreciates this, too.

“We can go into town,” Gilly says and Sansa decides she appreciates all of them.

* * *

Arya comes with her back to her room to grab her purse and change into real clothes.

“You can stay in our room tonight, too,” Arya says from the doorway of the bathroom as Sansa brushes her teeth.

She wants to say no. She wants to be brave. She wants to be the kind of person who will sacrifice herself to get good video for their show. Instead she makes a half-hearted shrug and finishes up.

* * *

Jon catches her wrist as she follows Arya outside, and he pulls her aside on the front porch.

“I don't want you staying in that room,” he says, the first words he's spoken all day.

She doesn't want to stay in that room, either, but for some reason when he says it, it infuriates her.

“I can handle myself,” she whispers harshly, tugging her wrist out of his grip. Her anger fades, though, when he sighs and rubs a hand over his face. He looks exhausted and she thinks again that he must not have slept last night (how many nights of sleep has he lost since she's come into his life? How does he not hate her with the way she's disrupted his existence so completely).

“I'm not saying you can't,” he says, keeping his voice low from the others. “I just... if it's...” _Ygritte._ He doesn't want to say it, he doesn't want to believe it. “You can come stay with me or something.” He forces a smile on his face and tries to joke, “I swear it's not a pickup line.”

His attempt at humor makes relief flood through her body and she finds herself letting out a small laugh even though it wasn't particularly funny.

“Or you can stay in town with Sam and Gilly,” the smile is gone and he's more serious now. “I can't let you get hurt because of me.”

“We don't even know if it _is_...” she can't say it. She can't say it because she doesn't want it to be true.

“Are you two done being gross?” Arya calls from the van. She's eyeing Jon up like he's some sort of threat and it almost makes Sansa laugh. Arya likes Jon, she knows this, but Arya has hated every guy she's ever dated (though to be fair Joffrey deserved it. Willas... well, Arya just thought he was painfully boring).

Jon sighs and rolls his shoulders like he's trying to ease the tension out of them. “She's not gonna be fun to deal with,” he mutters and that _does_ make her laugh.

“Are you coming to town with us?”

She wants him to. The idea of spending a day in town with him, like they're normal... But her hopes are dashed when he shakes his head.

“Got some stuff to do around here.”

He doesn't elaborate and she wonders what _stuff_ is and suddenly he's barely looking her in the eye. She wants to know what he means, what he'll be doing (but she thinks perhaps it's private and perhaps she shouldn't be here for it). So instead of prying she nods and he lifts one hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear. It's a soft gesture and it catches her off guard. For a moment she thinks he'll kiss her again, but he doesn't, he pulls back and watches her go and get into the van with the others. He stays on the porch and watches as they drive away.

* * *

The town is quaint and historic, small shops line the main cobbled street. It's decorated for fall and there's a bunch of tourists sightseeing, bundled in their hats and coats. Orange and yellow leaves swirl through the streets, the air is crisp and the sun shines enough that it isn't too cold. It's perfect, she thinks, and she wishes again that Jon had come along.

Watching Sam and Gilly hold hands and push Little Sam in his stroller, Bran and Meera talking animatedly at one another, Arya and Gendry fighting over the last of Gendry's coffee (Arya had already finished hers and is trying to steal the rest of his), it makes her heart ache. She wants to walk hand in hand with Jon through the town and she wants to sit in one of the cafes and drink coffee and people watch. She wants to be _normal._

It's a strange thought. She's never thought that she's _not_ normal, not really. Sure, she believes in ghosts, has seen one, hosts a ghost hunting show on YouTube. It had always just been a part of her. Her ghosts had kept her and Willas from truly connecting, she knows this, but it never really bothered her. She never once wished she didn't believe so that she and Willas could maybe work.

But now... now she wishes ghosts didn't exist. She wants to be normal, she wants Jon. She doesn't want ghosts to keep them apart (though she understands that without ghosts, she never would have met him in the first place). For a moment her mind spins off into an elaborate fantasy where she stays at Harrenhal for no real reason, just as a tourist and nothing more, she meets the handsome and elusive owner and they fall madly in love and nothing ever goes wrong, nothing ever goes bump in the night.

Her steps falter and she's jerked out of her daydream by the word.

_Love_.

There's no way she's in love with him. They've only known each other for... well, ok, she's technically known him for over a year, but not _really_. They've kissed twice and neither time had been _normal._ She barely knows him (except she does, she thinks. On some base level, it feels like she _knows_ him).

It's not love, though she's never really been in love before. She thought she was with Joffrey but that was just a teenage infatuation, dashed when she'd realized the truth of who he was. And she pretended to love Willas, but it was just something she'd tried to convince herself of. She's not sure what love is, really.

She knows she loves her family, a deep, profound thing that sits warm in her chest. She loves them fiercely, through anything. She even thinks that love has come to include Gendry and Meera, though it's different and newer.

She's honestly not sure she can include anyone else. She doesn't really have close friends, most people get put off by what she does and what she believes. When she was younger, she used to hide it; when she was in school, she was part of the popular crowd because she kept her mouth shut and played along. After Joffrey, she'd resolved to never be that again, and if people didn't like it, well... she'd lost a lot of friends very quickly. She hasn't heard from Margaery in years, Mya and Myranda are coworkers that she sometimes hangs out with, she lost Beth when she'd moved south. Others have come and gone, classmates, coworkers, people she'll go grab drinks with or go to the movies or go shopping with. No one she really trusts with her real feelings, not anymore.

“Don't look now,” Arya's voice cuts into her thoughts. Despite the words, Arya is pointing at a bakery across the street and in the window Sansa can see lemon cakes in the display. Sansa shoots her a grin and heads off across the street, she can hear Arya sigh dramatically and follow after her. Arya grumbles the entire time but also buys six different pastries (and tells Gendry to get his own, despite telling him that he needed to share his coffee with her not fifteen minutes prior).

Gilly _oohs_ and _aahs_ over the fancy cookie display and Sam buys her a dozen, letting her excitedly pick out each one. Bran and Meera aren't much on sweets (which Sansa cannot understand) but they end up buying some sort of muffin that doesn't look exciting at _all_.

“Jon likes apple stuff,” Gilly whispers into her ear and nudges her and Sansa can feel her face turn red (she remembers that Arya sent the screenshot to Gilly).

For a brief moment she considers playing it cool, saying something like _if he wanted something, he should've come with us_. But Sansa knows herself, she knows she isn't _cool_ , not really. So she finds an apple tart and buys it and has them package it up and she ignores the pleased smile on Gilly's face.

* * *

They get back as the sun begins to dip below the treeline. Without the sun, the chill in the air deepens and their breath clouds in the dusk.

Sam and Gilly say their goodbyes and take a worn out Little Sam home. They're just taking off their coats in the lobby when Brienne and Pod come out from the direction of the surveillance bay. Sansa feels her heart sink; they found something else.

“Should Jon be here for this?” Bran asks, looking around like Jon will suddenly appear.

Brienne seems to contemplate this, “it probably wouldn't hurt.”

They all look at Sansa and she realizes that she is now the keeper of Jon Snow (not that she minds, honestly). She nods and heads out the back in the direction of his home. She's surprised, though, to find him sitting on the back steps, Ghost rolling around in the grass out in the yard.

“Brienne and Pod think they found something, if you want to come watch?”

His head turns slightly to acknowledge her but he doesn't say anything and she finds herself sitting on the steps next to him.

“How was town?” he asks finally as Ghost sees her and runs to the stairs for her attention.

“It's really pretty,” she says as she scratches Ghost behind the ear. “Also I got you this.” Her other hand holds out the bakery bag to him and he takes it from her and looks inside. “It's apple. Gilly said you liked apple...” her voice trails off and she's nervous. Why is she nervous? It's an apple tart, there's nothing to be nervous over.

His mouth curls up in a lopsided smile, the one that crinkles his eyes and she feels the same flutter in her heart that she always gets around him. “Yeah,” he says, “I like apple.” He turns the smile from the bag to her and she knows her face is flushed red (she wishes desperately that her skin wasn't so fair, didn't give away everything she was feeling). If he notices, he doesn't comment on it. “There are cameras out here, right?”

The question seems to come out of nowhere and she nods and looks over her shoulder at the camera hanging just below the roofline. Did something happen out here? Do they need to check this footage? She looks back at him and he's sighing with a nod and for a moment she wonders if he just wanted to kiss her. She wants that, too, but she also understands not wanting to have the cameras on them. In fact, she realizes she very much doesn't want their third kiss to be filmed. The first two had both been _disasters_ , the next one needs to be right. It can't be at the inn – there are cameras everywhere except the bathrooms and a bathroom kiss does not qualify as _right_. She resolves to visit Jon's cabin again, where they can be alone.

“Come on,” he says and stands, holding out his hand to her. “We should go see what's up.”

She takes his hand and he pulls her up and he doesn't let go as they head inside, Ghost trotting along behind them. When they get to the surveillance bay, the others are waiting around and Jon only lets go of her hand once they've sat.

“Ok,” Pod says, queuing up video on one of the monitors. “This was from the other night in the east wing attic.”

The video starts and it's Sansa and Jon sitting in Alys's attic. Jon is staring off into space like he's deep in thought (he likely is, Sansa remembers feeling out of sorts during this, the slamming door still echoing in her mind).

_Is anyone here with us?_ video Sansa says and current Sansa is proud of the way her voice doesn't shake. In fact, she can't tell at all that video Sansa is having a full panic attack in that attic. There's silence. Usually they wear headphones to listen, but there's too many of them here and so Pod has the sound as high as it can go.

_My name is Sansa_ , video Sansa says and the instant after there's a sharp whisper that drowns out her introducing Jon.

Pod pauses the video.

“Sounded a lot like _get out_ ,” Meera says after a long stretch of silence. Sansa had heard that, too, and from the look on everyone else's faces, they're all in agreement. She feels something sour churn in her stomach.

“A little more,” Pod says, skipping forward through the video a bit.

_You ready to go?_ video Sansa is asking video Jon and just as Jon's nodding and they're both beginning to stand, another whispering sound.

Again, Meera is the first to speak. “Mine?”

Pod rolls the footage back and they all listen.

_You ready to go?_ video Sansa says, Jon nods, and then a whisper.

_Mine_.

“What does that mean?” Bran frowns at the monitor. “Mine?”

Next to her, Jon is tense and she turns slightly to look at him. When she meets his eye, she knows what he's thinking.

“What did you do to piss off Alys?” Arya asks and for a moment, Sansa's confused.

_Alys?_

Ok yes, they were in Alys's attic, and yes, the door slamming happened in the east wing, and yes, Sansa's bedroom is also in the east wing, but Alys? It _has_ to be Ygritte. Right?

“She didn't have a grudge against you before, why all the sudden?”

“She does seem mad at Sansa in particular,” Meera says. “With the whole knocking thing. Jon was there for the others, but it seems directed at Sansa.”

“Sans?” Bran asks when she doesn't respond to any of this.

“I don't know,” her voice comes out in a waver. “I didn't _do_ anything.”

This isn't how it was supposed to go. Next to her, Jon isn't interrupting to say _ghosts aren't real_. Brienne and Pod don't look bored and professional. Gendry, Meera, Bran. _Arya_. None of the _skeptics_ are speaking up, it's the only time in her life she's wanted them to.

“Ok, well we're all in agreement that Sansa isn't staying in her room by herself,” Bran says finally and again her brain screams that this isn't right. Bran should want her in that room, think of what else they could get on film. Instead he looks _worried_. They all look worried.

“I'd suggest she stay with me, but maybe that isn't the best idea,” Jon says slowly and without really looking at her.

“She'll stay in our room,” Meera says. “Not in the east wing.”

“I can stay in my own room,” she finally speaks up, a rebelliousness rising up in her. They're treating her like she's barely here, like she can't make her own decisions. Like she's _helpless_.

In the end, it's decided that she'll stay in her own room, just a new one in the west wing. Jon decides Ghost will stay with her and she would have fought except for the pleading look in his eyes, she finds she can't say no to it. They'll all keep their walkies on all night, Jon too. Sansa is to call for them immediately if something happens.

She grumbles and tells them all it's unnecessary but when she's finally alone in her new room, it feels overwhelmingly quiet. Bran and Meera are across the hall but she can't hear them and she's thankful for Ghost's presence.

That night she lays in bed with her walkie clutched in one hand and Ghost curled up at her side and when she finally sleeps, she dreams of falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally (tentatively) planned for 9 chapter & an epilogue but um... as usual, I'm too wordy and this got away from me. So probably a little more than that. whoops.


	10. in which there's an us

The next morning he wakes at the same time as always and he's up and heading to the door and his hand is reaching for Ghost's leash before he remembers Ghost is with Sansa.

Right.

Nothing had come through on the walkie last night, he can only assume that means nothing happened. It all comes rushing back to him and any rest he'd gotten last night disappears in a wave of exhaustion. He feels the muscles in his shoulders tighten, the horror that's been occupying the pit of his stomach for the past few days sits heavy.

At the start of this whole thing, he'd been convinced that doing the show would prove him right. Ghosts weren't real, Ygritte was a product of his exhaustion and guilt. But now.

_Now_.

Unless the Starks were running some well oiled and highly elaborate scheme and faking everything, his only conclusion is that they're real. And while Bran and Meera seem the type to exaggerate for content, he thinks Arya would be opposed out of sheer stubbornness and Sansa would never because she _believes_. The video of her sobbing into Arya's arms had nearly ruined him, his anger surging through him with nowhere to go. He can't fight a _ghost._

It's not just him, either. Brienne didn't believe in any of this, it was just a job to her, but he'd seen it on her face yesterday morning, the video of Sansa had gotten to her, too. Pod already seemed like he'd been coming around to the idea even before that.

No, Sansa's sheer terror in that video had done it for him. She wasn't faking it and as much as he thinks Bran and Meera might be willing to bend reality, he doesn't think they'd do _that_.

And how would they even have the time to manipulate the audio and video so quickly? Each night Pod backs up and sends their data to Tyrion so that a bunch of interns at WHC2 can spend hours upon hours watching their footage for anything they missed (he's never really thought of it before – that there are dozens of people watching endless hours of footage of them just... living. That there's some intern in a studio in King's Landing watching Sansa sleep every night and he thinks if he can't take his anger out on a ghost he definitely could on an intern).

Once he's dressed, he sets off towards the inn. He hopes Sansa sleeps in and he wants to be there when she wakes up. He hates the idea that she's suffering because of him, because of his past and the things he's done. She doesn't deserve that.

And honestly, _Ygritte_ doesn't deserve that.

Ygritte's parents had been Wildlings, she'd been born into conflict, she grew up in conflict, she died in conflict; she at least deserves to be dead in peace, not following him around like he's unfinished business. He didn't think he _would_ be unfinished business with her, their parting had seemed pretty final. And even as he was setting up the meeting between the Watch and the Wildlings, there'd been a coldness between them. It had _ended_ , so why is she here now?

He's so lost in thought he almost doesn't hear Sansa calling out to him.

She's near the edge of the woods as he rounds the final bend in the track, Harrenhal looming across the expansive back lawn. It looks terrifying in the early morning light, the sun hasn't quite risen and there are sharp shadows thrown across the building. He's never really thought about it before, how haunted Harrenhal _looks_. He's appreciated the architecture, he's fixed it up enough to know the building better than anyone else, but he's never looked at it through a lens of fear before. His eyes scan the building, the siding he's repainted, the windows in the upper floors that he's replaced, the roof he's patched up, the...

There, in the attic window in the east wing is a movement. It's too far to see properly, but it's _there_ and...

“Jon,” Sansa's hand touches his arm and he manages to not jerk away from her touch. “You ok?”

“Fine,” he says, throat tight, the pit of horror in his stomach feeling heavier. She looks tired and he decides not to tell her.

  
At their feet, Ghost prances around them, winding his leash around their legs haphazardly.

“Yes, hello,” Jon grumbles as he and Sansa disentangle themselves. “Sorry I'm not paying attention to you.” Ghost preens under his gaze and Jon rolls his eyes, but the giggle that escapes Sansa is worth it. “You sleep ok?” he asks, taking the leash from her hands.

“Ghost free,” she says. “Well, not Ghost-the-dog free, but...” she trails off and just like yesterday, she doesn't say the name they're both thinking. “Have you had coffee yet?” she changes the subject and he shakes his head. “Me neither.”

It hangs between them and he know they could go to Harrenhal's kitchen and make it, where they'll be watched by cameras and eventually everyone else would join them. Or...

“I could make you some,” he suggests and she nods quickly, like she'd been waiting for the invitation. It's good, he thinks, as they start back down the trail to his cabin. They haven't really gotten a chance to talk yet, they need to before everything spins wildly out of his control.

He makes her coffee and she sits at the little kitchen bar on one of the stools and when it's done, he gets out sugar and creamer and sets it before her on the counter. She stares at it for a few seconds before asking “you have creamer?”

“You do take it, right?” He's confused. He's watched her in the Harrenhal kitchens enough times to know that this is the creamer she likes and that she loads her coffee with so much of it and so much sugar that she's barely drinking coffee anymore.

“Last time you didn't have any,” she says slowly and picks up the bottle, “and you don't really seem like a _pumpkin spice_ kind of guy.” There's a smile working it's way onto her face and she looks up at him and waves the creamer at him. “You bought this for me.”

Well, there goes any hope of being _subtle_ and _mysterious_.

When he doesn't answer, her smile stretches to a grin and she happily pours the creamer into her mug until it's barely coffee colored and she spoons in a disgusting amount of sugar. “Thank you,” she says as she takes her first sip and hums happily with a mouthful of coffee.

Fuck subtle and mysterious, this is better.

They drink their coffee in silence. He could bring up the things they need to talk about, but he wants to have this bit of normalcy before everything gets messy and complicated.

Too soon they're done and he leads her over to the couch, which is more comfortable than his old backless bar stools.

“I think,” he starts as she curls her legs up under her, “I think I should stay away from you.”

She frowns. “Because of Ygritte?” The name sounds sharp in the air, it's the first time either of them have really said it out loud. He nods and her frown deepens.

  
“So we should just let her win?”

There's a stubborn streak to Sansa, he's finding. Normally she lets the rest of them walk all over her, she does what they want to do, she tries to make everyone else happy, but he's noticed that whenever she feels weak or helpless, she suddenly turns stubborn and stupidly brave. It's adorable, he _likes_ when she stands up for herself, except when she's arguing against her own safety.

“It's not about _winning_ ,” he sighs, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. He's tired, he hasn't slept well in days. “If it is her, if she's mad about us, I don't want you getting hurt.”

“So there's an us?”

The question confuses him, it takes his brain a moment to catch up. There's a pleased smile on her lips and if he weren't trying to have a serious conversation with her, he'd laugh.

“Sans,” he tries to bring her back on topic.

“She hasn't hurt me,” Sansa says, face turning serious. “The worst she's done is keep me awake.”

He wants to laugh at that, he wants to march her back to the inn and sit her down in front of Pod's computer and replay the footage of her terror.

“I can't watch you get scared like that again.” He forces the admittance out, uses all of his willpower to grit out the truth, to show her his weakness.

Something in her face softens and then she's shifting up onto her knees and leaning forward and before he really has a chance to react, she's kissing him. Her hand cups his jaw lightly, her other coming up to steady herself against his shoulder. His own hands lift to her waist and at the touch, she surges forward, climbing onto his lap, the movement abrupt and it jostles them and clacks their teeth together and then they're both laughing and she's kissing him again.

It feels like what a first kiss _should_ be, soft and searching, her arms coming to wind around his neck, his hands at her hips, curling around the small of her back. This is what their first kiss should have been, not the wild desperate thing last year, not something filmed in a hallway.

She pulls away to breathe but she doesn't move far, she rests her forehead against his, her breath ghosting on his lips. They wait like that, breathing each other in and it takes what feels like hours for him to realize that he's waiting for something, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's waiting for her to push him away and run off like last year, or for a door to slam like the other night, but nothing ever comes. It's just them and she seems to realize it, too.

She gives him a small smile and says so quietly he almost doesn't hear, “third time's a charm.”

* * *

On the screen Jaime Lannister swings on a rope across a gorge with his Jonquil held in his arms. Sansa's curled up against him on the couch and she sighs dreamily.

He hasn't watched this movie in ages and adult Jon wants to pick it apart – they're in a jungle, _where_ did that rope come from? Why is it conveniently hanging over the gorge? How does Florian's hair stay so perfect when the humidity should ruin it, let alone being chased through the jungle by a group of sellswords. Also, where is there a jungle in Westeros?

He won't say any of it, though. Sansa's head is nestled against his shoulder and she gasps and sighs and oohs and ahhs like it's the first time she's ever seen it, even though he's watched her lips move as she silently mouths the lines along with Jonquil.

This is a new experience for him, just... sitting on a couch with a girl, watching a movie. He'd been a loner in high school, the new kid with a strange Northern accent and a dead mom. He didn't like to be away from the house because he didn't want to leave Dany there alone, and so he didn't go to parties, he didn't join any sports or clubs, he didn't go on dates. He waited and waited and waited until they both turned eighteen and escaped that house.

So this whole _just spending time_ with a girl is new. He tries to picture what it would have been like to sit and watch a movie with Ygritte and he comes up blank. The closest he's ever come to something like this was sitting in the basement of Viserys's house with Dany, watching movies with the volume turned down low, both of them straining to hear any movement upstairs, just in case.

“So tell me how Jon Snow came to have a copy of _The Fool_ in his collection,” Sansa asks, breaking him out of his thoughts. The credits are rolling, he hadn't even noticed.

He sighs and scratches at his beard as Sansa shifts to look at him. “My aunt,” he tells her. “Daenerys. Dany. We watched a lot of movies. We'd go to these library sales after school and pick out old tapes to try out.” At her raised eyebrow, he explains, “we're the same age. My dad was her older brother, he was... a lot older then my mom. And she was an oops _years_ after her brothers were born.” He doesn't want to talk about any of this, he realizes. He wants to keep this strange calm that's settled over his little cabin, just the two of them wrapped in a haze of peace.

There are no ghosts here and he wants to keep it that way.

“She saw the cover of it and wanted to watch. I thought it looked dumb and boring but she made me watch it anyway. Turns out I think I liked it more than she did.”

He doesn't tell her that after that, he'd gone out and bought every Jaime Lannister movie he could get his hands on and one time tried to straighten his hair to get it to look like Jaime's. It had been a disaster, a frizzy puffy mess on his head that had made Dany laugh until she cried. It's one of his best memories of that house, Viserys had been out somewhere and Dany had sat on the bathroom floor in hysterics, until Jon was laughing, too. He thinks it's one of the only times he laughed in that house.

Maybe some day he'll tell Sansa about it. About Viserys, about what he was like, about the constant fear that lingered over them (about the things he thinks Viserys used to do to Dany before he came to live with them).

Sansa's laying with her head in his lap and she's grinning up at him and he thinks no, not _maybe_. He'll tell her, one day. Not today, though, he's still new at this _sharing_ thing. Baby steps.

“We should probably look at our phones,” she sighs, frowning dramatically at the idea. Two hours ago they'd agreed that they didn't want to go back to the inn. She'd texted Arya they weren't coming back for a few hours and then they'd put their phones in the kitchen on silent. “I don't know how happy Brienne will be if we miss two days of work in a row.”

She doesn't sit up right away but eventually she does and he goes to retrieve their phones. When he unlocks his, he has nearly a hundred missed texts and he hears Sansa mutter something under her breath as she looks at her own phone.

It turns out, Arya had added them all to a group chat and he skims through the messages quickly (he nearly laughs at Brienne's _please remove me from this_ and he appreciates Gilly's _aww, just let them be!_ )

“Arya's a menace,” he says finally, closing his messages and setting his phone back down. “Even if we weren't being haunted...” he regrets the words immediately, he feels reality crash down around them as Sansa's face turns from light annoyance at her siblings to something darker.

After a few moments of silence, she finally says “what do we do?”

He knows she doesn't mean _should we go back_ _or stay here_.

“I don't know.”

“Nothing happened here,” her voice takes on a slightly desperate edge. “It's been fine... and last night nothing happened. But why would it have suddenly stopped?”

It didn't, he thinks, remembering the movement in the attic window this morning. _It didn't stop, you just didn't see it._

“I tried to talk to her.” His voice cracks a bit as he says it and he hates how uncertain he sounds. “Yesterday, while you guys were in town, I... I dunno, I tried to talk to her. To ask her to stop.”

Maybe it worked. Nothing had happened to Sansa since they came back from town, he was the only one who had seen the movement in the attic window. Sansa moves forward and takes his hand in hers, threading her fingers through his in a way that's starting to feel familiar and comforting.

“I don't know if I did it right. Is there a right way to do that sort of thing?”

She shrugs. “Honestly, we mostly just do what we can. When we ghost hunt, we're really just trying to talk to anything that's there. Usually if you're trying to speak to someone in particular you get a medium or something.”

“Have you ever done that?”

She shrugs again and lowers her eyes to the floor. “A few times. Once, in high school, I got my friend to drive us to this medium in Raventree Hall. I don't think she was real. Just expensive, with a lot of vague things to say. We've talked to a few doing our show and... I'm never really convinced by any of them. None of them ever really sound like mom.”

“Maybe it's better that they're not real.”

“Better?” she pulls away from him. “How is it _better_. Don't you wish you could talk to your mom?”

He takes a moment to think it over before he answers. “Of course I'd like to talk to her. I wish she were still alive and that I could talk to her anytime I want. But she's not and... and maybe it's better that I can't. Because if I could, I'd never want to do anything else.”

She stares at him and there's an expression on her face that he can't identify and she pulls back completely, her hand tearing from his.

“We should get back,” she turns from him and without waiting, grabs her coat off the rack and shrugs it on and she leaves him standing alone in his living room.

* * *

He makes his way to the inn and doesn't look up at the attic window as he walks across the lawn, though he feels an itch like someone is watching him. _The cameras,_ he tells himself.

The others are in the kitchen and when he walks in, Arya says “well look who finally showed his face,” and he doesn't have the energy to respond. Sansa isn't here and the others finally seem to realize that she isn't with him, either. Arya gives him a look and he shakes his head and then she's headed out of the kitchen.

He follows and they make their way to the west wing.

“What did you do?” Arya asks. She isn't playacting anymore as the overprotective little sister. This is actually Arya, furious that he's done something wrong.

“I don't know,” he tells her as they head down the hall and when they get near Sansa's door, they can hear the shower running. Arya holds up her hand and he understands to wait and she goes into the room and he can hear her call out and he feels relief flood him when Sansa responds.

When Arya returns to the hallway, she levels a glare at him and he sighs and says “ _I don't know._ ” Arya face is stone and he brings his hands up and grinds his palms into his eyes against the headache he feels forming behind them. “We just watched a movie. I don't know what happened.”

He really doesn't. One moment they were fine, the next she was gone (she was gone before she even left the house, she was gone the second her hand slipped from his).

His eyes take a few moments to readjust to the light after he lowers his hands back down and he watches Arya sigh and she looks... vulnerable. Young, and he's reminded just how young she actually is. She's nearly eight years younger than him but right now she looks like a child.

“She gets quiet sometimes,” Arya tells him, voice smaller then he's ever heard it. (On the video the other night he'd watched Sansa break down in Arya's arms but he understands in this moment that Arya needs her just as much. He wonders if this has happened before, if Arya has had to watch Sansa just... leave, even when she's still there.)

* * *

During the meeting (that has been delayed because he and Sansa decided to ignore the world for a few hours), she won't meet his eyes. She doesn't seem to want to look at Arya, either and he watches Arya's face get redder and redder throughout the meeting. By the end, she looks _furious_ and he feels a kinship with her in this. Anger has always been easy for him and he thinks it must be the same for Arya (it's easy to be angry. It's safe. In some ways, it's a comfort. Rage numbs and blinds).

Gendry also seems to notice this because before Brienne has even finished speaking, he's pulling her from the room. When they're gone, he watches Sansa's entire body relax, like she'd been prepping for a fight.

“Ok, so Sansa and Jon...” Brienne starts but he holds up his hand.

“I'll go alone.”

They all turn to look at him (Sansa _finally_ looks at him) and Brienne falters and looks back at their schedule.

“We all think this... whatever's happening is directed at Sansa, but a lot of it's happened when I'm there too. So I'll go alone and see if anything happens with just me.”

It's solid reasoning and Bran and Meera are both nodding in agreement. In reality, he doesn't want to go back up to that attic and sit in silence with a Sansa who can't even look at him, when he doesn't know what he did or what to say to her.

* * *

That night, he barely registers Bran handing him the equipment or making his way to the east wing attic. He barely registers Meera setting up the camera on it's stand in the middle of the room. He shouldn't have said anything about the medium, he thinks. That's when it changed. He's not sure why, just that it did.

“Remember you actually have to talk,” Meera says as she switches the camera on. “Ask questions. Don't just sit here like a lump like you did the first time. Talk to her.”

_Talk to her_.

How stupid he'd felt, sitting in Sansa's old east wing bedroom yesterday. He'd switched the camera off in the room and there were no mics. He'd felt alone and stupid, talking to the air, asking Ygritte to just _stop_.

He can't talk to Ygritte here, on camera. He won't say her name. The last thing he needs is for someone to watch this godsdamned show and get curious and start digging. One of those _fangirls_ everyone found so funny. They'd broken into his home, what's to say they wouldn't dig into his history. And he doesn't want to think about what would happen if someone started to ask questions about the Wildlings. About his time in the Watch.

No, if he talks, he'll have to talk to _Alys_.

He tries to remember what the others say, what they ask.

“Uh, Alys,” he says into the darkness, “hey. I'm Jon. But you know that, I've been here before. Um, if you're here, could you...” he doesn't finish the sentence because a chill runs down his spine. Not just a shiver, but an actual, physical cold, like ice. “Fuck,” he breathes, turning to look behind him.

There's nothing there, of course.

Except the window is open.

He knows it wasn't earlier, he'd looked up here just this morning, saw something moving...

“Has anyone been up here today?” he asks into his walkie. He gets a resounding _no_ from the others. “And no one left the window open at any point?” More negatives, with Bran excitedly asking if the window is currently open.

_Yes_.

“Look, I'm sure none of you meant to do it, or didn't realize you were, but let's not run up my heating bill, ok? Let's be more careful.”

He gets up and walks over and slams the window shut and locks it for good measure. There's static and more talking from the walkie but he ignores it and switches off the receiver altogether. When he sits back in the chair, he says “alright, let's try this again. Alys, if you're here, do something.”

Nothing happens. His heart beats wildly in his chest, blood pumping furiously.

“Come on. Show me just how scary you can be.”

Nothing.

“Or maybe ghosts aren't _fucking real_.”

  
(Anger has always been easier.)

“This is bullshit,” he mutters to himself and stands again and turns the camera off. When it's off he runs a hand through his hair, his muscles tense. He forces himself to relax; drops his shoulders, unclenches his jaw, lets his hands hang loose at his sides, goes muscle by muscle. He remembers doing this in the Watch, forcing his body to relax during long hours of guard duty, hours of crouching in abandoned buildings with the Wildlings. He closes his eyes and forces his breathing into an easy, steady rhythm.

When Sansa's hand slides into his, her fingers threading between his, he feels himself relax even further, a tension he hadn't even noticed lifting away. He smiles and he opens his eyes just as he opens his mouth to speak and...

Nothing.

_Sansa isn't here._

For a moment the room spins as he steps back, nearly tripping over the chair and camera on it's tripod. There's no breath in his lungs as he stumbles out of the attic, down three flights of stairs, and he doesn't stop until he's outside. He takes deep, gasping breaths of the freezing November air. Behind him, he can hear voices and he's sure the others have followed his progress on the cameras, are following him out. He wants to run to his cabin but he doesn't (he _can't_ , because then he'll be alone).

He turns around just as the others come outside and against his will, his eyes move towards the east wing attic.

The window is open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some day I'll look back at my original outline and have a good laugh. I honestly don't know why I bother


	11. in which a window is open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually put notes up top, mostly cause I don't want to spoil anything that's gonna happen, but I feel the need to in this one. I wanted to put in a trigger warning for this chapter, for suicidal thoughts. It's hopefully not too much and it's important to the narrative, but I don't want anyone to go into this one blind.

“The window's open.”

They all turn to look and they know exactly which window to look for.

Sansa feels her hands start to shake; the window is _open._ The window she had watched Jon close not ten minutes ago.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” she hears Bran whisper.

“Language.” Her response is automatic and Bran doesn't even seem to hear her.

They stand in silence on the back lawn, staring up at the attic window.

“I think I need a drink,” Brienne says.

* * *

“You all look like you've seen a ghost,” the pretty blonde bartender laughs. When none of them respond, she shoots a questioning look at Jon, who just shakes his head at her. They must know each other. “Well,” the blonde's smile falters for a moment, but she rebounds, “welcome to the best bar in town.”

“ _Only_ bar in town,” Jon mutters and the girl laughs.

“You forget about Bronn's?” The blonde turns to the rest of them and adds “that place's a shithole, the only people that go there are people I've kicked out of here.”

Sansa knows it would be good manners to laugh, but she can't even force herself to do that. The bartender gives them all an appraising look before taking out eight shot glasses and pouring some dark liquid into each.

“On the house.”

“Like hell,” a different bartender comes out of the back and says. “It's going on your tab, Snow.”

Jon waves his hand absentmindedly and picks up the glass and downs his shot in one go. She watches Arya and Gendry do the same. Brienne as well (which should surprise Sansa, but doesn't). When Sansa picks up her own, the liquor smell is overwhelming and she has to hold her nose to drink it, which makes the two bartenders laugh. It burns going down and she coughs until her eyes water.

“You look like you've seen a ghost,” the male bartender says and the blonde rolls her eyes.

“I already made that joke, read the room.”

“I was making conversation,” the male says. “I assume ya'll are from that show Snow's gotten himself mixed up with?”

“You heard about it?” Bran asks, his voice a wheeze after the alcohol.

“Whole town's heard about it. The Great Skeptic Jon Snow, signing up to be a ghost hunter.”

“Fuck off Jarl,” Jon sighs, tapping his shot glass against the counter and the blonde refills it.

“Oh come on,” the blonde laughs. “How many times have I listened to you bitch about...” she seems to realize what she's about to say and who she's about to say it in front of and she shuts her mouth.

Sansa wonders if Jon had ever come here and complained about them. About _her_.

“I'm Val, by the way,” the blonde tries to laugh. “Since Jon is too rude to make introductions.”

“Val,” Jon says, waving his hand at her, “everyone. Everyone, Val.”

“Charming,” the man called Jarl drawls.

“It's been a long night,” Arya says, like she's trying to defend Jon.

“Technical problems,” Pod pipes up when Val opens her mouth to ask. “Real bother.”

Sansa doesn't miss the grateful look that Jon shoots Pod.

Bran, Meera, Arya, Gendry, and Pod keep the two bartenders distracted as Jon and Brienne drink. Sansa feels bad for them; the others are used to it and Pod always seemed more open to the idea. But Jon and Brienne, this must be so... _much_. She remembers how it felt when she saw her mother, the way her entire world tilted on it's axis. It was the same world, but _different_. And she'd been young, easier to accept change.

She looks over and finds Jon with his hand on the bar, palm up as he stares at it in a daze.

* * *

She's not proud of it, but she drinks enough that she thinks she'll be able to fall asleep.

Jon leaves for his cabin in silence and she doesn't try to stop him. She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't want to think about it. Not tonight.

_It's all I'd ever do_.

When she falls into bed, the world spins around her pleasantly (she hasn't been drunk in a while) and her eyes feel heavy. She'll just close them for a moment and then she'll get up and brush her teeth and drink some water like a responsible adult.

She opens her eyes to cold wind stinging her face and it takes a moment for her vision to focus on... the forest? Why is she at the window? When did she get up and open her window? And... she's only on the second floor, why does this feel higher? She looks down at her hands gripping the window ledge. Why is she leaning out so far? That isn't safe.

She pulls herself back in and blinks slowly and looks behind her at the dark room. At the chair and the tripod in the middle of it.

Fear claws at her throat and her head feels suddenly, strikingly clear.

She's in the attic.

_No no no no no no,_ her mind chants as she walks barefoot to the attic door. She remembers taking her shoes and socks off in her room. She remembers taking her jeans off, and sure enough, she's only in her knit sweater and underwear, her legs are bare and pale in the thin moonlight coming through the window.

The doorknob won't turn. The door is closed, the doorknob won't turn. It's locked. She's locked in the attic.

The window is open.

“ _No no no no no,_ ” she yanks on the doorknob, turns it as hard as she can, rattles the door in it's frame, pounds her fist against it.

She needs to get out. She needs to get out of this attic.

_She could always jump._

The thought comes out of nowhere and forces the breath out of her lungs.

_It's not such a long way down_.

She shakes the thought out of her head and looks around until... there's a walkie laying on the floor by the chair and a sob of relief rips from her throat and she drops to her knees next to the chair and grabs it. It's off but she switches it back on and presses the button. “I'm in the attic,” she calls through, “hello?” There's no response and part of her goes numb with fear. They didn't agree to keep the walkies on tonight. No one will hear her. No one will come for her. No one loves her enough to come for her. No one will ever love her, not really. She really should just...

She finds herself standing, muscles moving without her really noticing.

The window is open.

Really, what was she thinking? Why would anyone come for her? No one loves her. They all leave. Mom and dad and Robb left. Oh sure, Bran and Arya are still around, _technically,_ but they left long ago, they met people they love more than her. Rickon will too, soon enough. All her friends left. All her boyfriends left. Some day her grandparents will leave. Jon will leave, once he really gets to know her. It's not such a long way down.

“Sansa?”

The voice crackles through the walkie. For a moment she can't move, but then her hand lifts and she presses the button with her thumb and her voice comes out shaky and distant. “Bran?”

“Did you say something?” his voice sounds sleepy. “I swear I heard you say something.”

She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out.

“Sans? Sansa. _Sansa_.”

The window is open.

She takes a step forward.

“Sans, your door is open, you aren't in your room, _where are you_.”

Her mouth is dry. Her legs are cold. She brings the walkie up.

“I'm in the attic.”

“What, why? Sans? Are you there?”

“Sansa, keep talking to us.” _Meera,_ she thinks distantly.

_The window is open_.

“The window is open.”

“Ok, my walkie is on, what's going on?”

_Arya_.

_It's not such a long way down._

“It's not such a long way down.”

“What the _fuck_ does that mean.”

She doesn't know. She's not sure what any of it means, not really.

But the window is open.

And really, it's not such a long way down.

“Is Jon on? Did you call him?”

“I texted him, what the _fuck is happening_.”

“Sansa, are you still there?”

Is she? She's not sure. Was she ever really here? She thinks so. Her legs are cold.

“I'm here. I haven't left. But I will, someday. Everyone leaves.”

“ _What the fuck does that mean_.”

“I'm on, what's this about Sansa?”

“She's in the attic, we're on our way, Ayra, you guys are closer.”

“Why is she in the attic? Sansa, why are you in the attic?”

She can't talk. She shouldn't talk. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe it's good she can't talk.

_It's all she'd ever do._

“If I could talk to her again, it's all I'd ever do.”

“ _Arya_.”

“Almost there, almost there.”

The window is open and it's dark outside, but it's not such a long way down.

She can do it.

She can see them again.

“Sansa open the door.”

Something about the voice is different this time. There's no static.

“Sansa open the _fucking door_.”

“It's locked.”

The door rattles in it's frame, someone is shaking it. She wonders if it's Nothing.

No, Nothing is in here, with her.

There's a splintering sound and the door slams open and it's like a veil is torn from her and she blinks against the light of a flashlight. In her hand, the walkie crackles.

“Sansa? Arya? What's happening?”

“ _Fucking fuck_ ,” Arya rushes in and grabs her by the shoulders and _shakes_. “What the _fuck_ was that.”

“I don't know. I don't... I need to get out of here.”

She doesn't know what's happening but she needs to _get out_.

“We've got her,” she hears Gendry say into the walkie. “We're coming down.”

She walks on shaky legs down the stairs, Arya's hand in a death grip on her own, Gendry following behind. In the third floor hallway, running at them full sprint, are Bran and Meera. They stop and start to talk at her but she _can't_.

“No,” she says, pushing past them. “I need to get _out_.”

She needs to get away from the attic. The window is still open.

She hears the others talking but she doesn't stop. Her legs are shaking and weak, she holds on to the railing of the grand central staircase as she goes down.

“Sansa, you aren't wearing anything,” Meera calls after her. “You'll freeze.”

There's a slam from below, _she's so close to the ground floor_. There's a slam and then the pounding of feet and Jon appears at the bottom of the staircase. _Jon's here_ , she thinks. Everyone's here.

Everyone came for her.

“Sans,” he breathes and takes the stairs two at a time until he reaches her.

“You aren't wearing any shoes,” she frowns down at his bare feet. He's wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and no shoes. He shouldn't be going outside in that. “You'll get sick.”

The look he gives her is a strange mix of confusion and fury and then he looks past her, at the others on the stairs behind her.

His hand on her arm is so warm, almost hot.

“Let's get you some pants,” Meera says and then Jon is pushing at her arm back up the stairs towards the second floor. She doesn't want to go _up_. But they go into the west wing and that feels a bit better. Down the hall, her door is wide open. Who left it open?

Her jeans are on the floor of her room next to her socks and shoes. Her purse is on the bed. The bed is made but slightly rumpled (she laid down here, a long time ago). Arya is rifling through her things, which she thinks is very rude, and pulls out a pair of sweatpants with River U's logo on the leg.

She steps into them and then into the pair of socks Arya shoves onto her feet. Arya is angry. They're all talking around her, she hears Arya tell the others about the locked door and the attic.

“The window's still open,” she tells them. “I left the window open.”

“I don't think you did that,” Bran says quietly.

“No,” she says, remembering, “no, it was already open.”

“I don't know what happened here,” Jon cuts in, “but you aren't staying. None of you are staying. Someone get Brienne and Pod.”

She expects them to argue but they don't (Arya _always_ argues). Instead she watches them go between her room and Bran's, gathering sheets and pillows and Jon makes her put her boots on and she follows him down the stairs where they meet Brienne and Pod and they go out the back and the others follow behind. They walk across the back lawn and she knows, behind her, the window is still open.

She looks back, she looks up, and there, in the window, is Nothing.

“Come on,” Jon turns her gently back and they head into the forest and the trees hide Harrenhal from her view.

Ghost is happy to have so many visitors and Jon apologizes that he doesn't have a guest room.

“I own an entire fucking _inn_ , I never thought I'd need a guest room.”

The others make sleeping spots on the floor of the living room and Jon pulls her into his bedroom, which she thinks is very forward of him. He helps her take off her boots and then he settles her onto his bed and crawls in with her. She likes cuddling and she thinks Jon fits her perfectly, but instead of cuddling, his arms wrap around her so tightly she almost can't breathe.

“Please don't do that again. Whatever that was.”

“I don't know what that was,” she says against his shoulder. “I don't know what happened.”

“We can talk about it in the morning, ok?”

She nods and his arms loosen, just enough. She lays in silence and tries to remember, tries to piece together the moments of clarity, tries to shift through the jumble of thoughts and feelings and sensations.

“Jon,” she whispers into the darkness. He makes a rumbling noise that lets her know he's awake. “I don't think it's Ygritte.”

His arms tighten momentarily, his entire body goes stiff and he finally releases a shuddering breath.

“We'll talk about it in the morning.”

* * *

It had started in the attic.

She lays awake in the dark, Jon's breathing deep and even next to her.

It had started in the attic- a voice on tape, a touch at the back of her neck.

It had started in the attic and now it's crept down the stairs and through the halls, spreading, _growing_.

Why?

Why this, why now.

She remembers the voice whispering in her ear.

_The window is open. It's not such a long way down._

At the time it had felt like her own voice, like her own thoughts, every little doubt that sat deep in her mind like poison (that no one loves her and no one cares about her, not really, not like they pretend to, no matter how hard she tries).

Next to her, Jon shifts and she pulls back to look at him. His face is more relaxed than she's ever seen it, he looks peaceful as he sleeps. She thinks maybe she might love him, though the rational part of her brain tries to tell her she shouldn't, it hasn't been long enough. Look how long she'd dated Willas and it hadn't happened.

But she feels it, feels the way that seeing him is different from the others. She felt the way her heart had soared when she saw him tonight at the bottom of the stairs, the way she _knew_ she was safe. She's not sure if he feels the same way but she wants to believe that he does, that he ran barefoot through the forest to find her.

Part of her fears that it's the ghosts; that he only feels something for her because she's in danger, or because his life has been spun on it's axis and she's something to hold onto. It feels like the worse things get, the deeper they fall into each other and she thinks that isn't sustainable. At some point, something has to give.

She's not sure when she falls asleep, but at some point she does and for the first time in weeks, she sleeps deeply and dreamlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the spam updates, I wrote the last chapter & this one in a weird fugue state the other night and I just kinda wanted to get it out.
> 
> I know the way I wrote this might be confusing, but it's kind of supposed to be? This is also probably the worst thing that will happen for the rest of the story, if that helps (though to be honest, my barometer for scary stuff is a little skewed, considering how much of it I consume)
> 
> I also just wanted to say that I appreciate everyone who's reading this! Stay safe out there!


	12. in which Jon will take what he can get

He wakes to Sansa in his arms and for a moment everything feels right.

But then he remembers.

_She's safe now_ , he reminds himself. She's here, she's safe, and she's never stepping foot in that building again. Fuck the network, fuck their contracts, he's shutting it all down. He'll shut it down and ship her back to Riverrun. Away from Harrenhal, away from him.

Something in him rebels against the idea, but it's what he has to do. She needs to be safe.

His arms feel stiff and he realizes he's had them locked around her all night and he slowly relaxes them, lets his muscles unwind, easing onto his back (one of his arms is still trapped beneath her, but he doesn't mind). With the loss of contact, she makes a little noise in her sleep and turns to burrow into his side.

It shouldn't feel so right, to have her here, he thinks. She needs to leave, she needs to go back to Riverrun.

One of her arms moves and her hand comes to rest on his stomach and begins to move slowly across his torso and when he looks down at her face, half turned into his shoulder, her eyes are closed much too tightly and he sighs.

“You know, your siblings are right on the other side of that door,” he cautions as her hand reaches the hem of his t-shirt and slips under. At the first brush of her fingers across his skin, he nearly shivers.

In her feigned sleep, he watches her try to suppress a smile and her eyes scrunch tighter closed and she turns her head further into him. Her hand, now completely under his shirt, traces the hair from his navel down...

“Ok,” he groans and catches her hand in his. “If the threat of your siblings isn't enough, just think of Brienne hearing us.”

At that she pulls back, all pretense of sleep gone, and she scrunches her face up (exactly, he thinks. He doesn't _ever_ want to be on the receiving end of one of Brienne's disapproving frowns).

“I can be quiet,” she says and he _knows_ she's doing it all on purpose, but the little pout and the fluttering eyes _get to him_.

“Not if I'm doing it right,” he sighs and brings her hand up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles before letting it go. She doesn't say anything to that and when he looks back at her, her eyes are staring at his mouth, a little unfocused and he can't help but laugh. He leans in for a kiss and just as he's about to reach her lips, she gasps and pulls back, slapping a hand over her mouth. Her eyes are huge and she rolls away from him, onto her back, both hands now up and covering her mouth.

“I forgot I haven't brushed my teeth,” her words are muffled by her hands.

“Neither have I,” he shrugs and moves to tug her hands away, but she just keeps them tight over her mouth and shakes her head.

“Fourth time can't be a disaster!” Her words are still muffled and he can't help the grin that's taken over his face. “I drank last night! I never brushed my teeth!”

_Like that's the worst thing that happened last night_.

It's like ice water is dumped over his head at the thought. What is he _doing_? Trying to kiss her, flirt with her. Not five minutes ago he was promising to put her in a car and send her back to Riverrun. One touch from her and it's like all of his sense leaves him.

She seems to notice the shift because her hands slowly lower from her mouth and he can see that last night is coming back to her, too. The haze of waking up together is gone, she's remembering this isn't normal, that _they_ aren't normal.

“I'll wake everyone up,” he says and sits up, trying to ignore the sadness in her eyes. “I'll get your bags packed and...”

“ _What_ ,” she bolts upright so quickly she almost knocks into him.

“You aren't staying here,” he frowns. “I'll call Tyrion today and tell him this is done.”

“ _No._ ” It's not anger in her expression. “No, Jon, we can't... we can't _stop_. There's only eight days left!”

Eight days. Has it really only been three weeks since they arrived? In a few days, it'll be December. It seems like they've been here for years, not just three weeks.

“Sans, look at how much this has escalated in just a few days,” he can feel a tension headache forming in the back of his skull, radiating down his neck and into his shoulders. “I don't want to see what _eight more_ brings.”

“So we just give up and I leave? And you stay here with... with whatever _it_ is? And we leave your guests to it? Or are you gonna go ahead and sell the inn? Give up everything you and Sam and Gilly have worked for?”

The tension headache throbs and he brings a hand up to put pressure at the base of his skull. It's not like he's thought this through, his first and only priority is to get them, to get _her_ , to safety.

And really, what is he thinking, anyway. She doesn't belong here. After filming, what is he expecting? That she'll give up her life and move here with him after only three weeks? No, she'll go back to Riverrun and forget all about him and he'll...

What _will_ he do? Can he really let guests back in? Find someone sleepwalking up to the attic a month from now? And if he shuts down the inn, what does that mean for everyone else? He and Sam and Gilly have put _everything_ into this place. He's literally bled for it, ripped his hands open so many times doing repairs, he can't even count.

What would happen to Edd? Edd, who's only known this and the Watch. Edd, who still sometimes gets a faraway look in his eyes. Does he send Edd back out into the real world?

And Jeyne. Jeyne who flinches at every noise. Jeyne who just joined a book club, who's _finally_ able to look him in the eye after years of employment.

Wyn, whose sick mom lives in town and this job gives her enough money to support her. They let her leave in the middle of the day if there's an emergency, Gilly taking over front desk duties. Jon takes her holiday shifts so she can be with her family. What other job would let her do that?

Mel, who he can't imagine thriving anywhere else like she does here. Mel, who never talks about her past and he never asks.

These people, this collection of misfits and loners who have been the closest thing to a family that he has – does he rip their home out from under them? Take his cut of the sale and run?

He can't put them in danger. What if one day it's Jeyne up in that attic? What if...

“Jon,” she says softly, taking hold of his arm. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... I just meant maybe we should try to figure this out? There has to be something we can do?”

“What, we call a Septon and have him exorcise the attic? Get weirwood root and burn it and say some Children of the Forest prayer and hope it scares away whatever's there?”

“I don't know, I just know that something changed and maybe we can figure out what, but we can't do that if we just _give up_.”

He keeps the pressure up on the base of his skull and closes his eyes. The bed shifts and he feels her hands come up and her cool fingertips rub circles at his temples and she presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I'm ok,” she whispers against his skin. “I'm ok, you all came for me. We'll be better from now on. We'll keep each other safe, but we can't run away. _I_ can't run away.”

* * *

The tension in the room is nearly unbearable. Sansa sits on the bed and he's next to her with Arya on the other side. Bran stands, shifting from foot to foot (Jon's never seen him so ruffled, so unnerved). Gendry takes up a post next to the door like a guard, face impassive but Jon can see the tension in his shoulders that matches his own. Meera sits on one of the chairs with her shoulders slumped inward. Brienne stands next to the table with the monitors that Pod sits in front of.

Pod has spent hours going through the video footage this morning (after he and Sansa had come out of his room to find that they'd all heard their fight) and he's finally called them all in to present them with what he's put together. A montage of the night, and Jon can tell none of them really want to watch it, but he thinks maybe they need to.

The video starts in Sansa's room and Jon watches her throw her purse onto the bed and kick off her shoes haphazardly and then unbutton her jeans and nearly trip in them as she tries to take them off. She's drunk and it would be funny if it... if it just _weren't_. Her socks come off in her jeans and she practically falls onto the bed, rolling onto her back. She closes her eyes and lays like that and Pod reaches forward and time skips what Jon thinks is about a half hour.

There's silence in the room, there's silence from the video. And then she sits up. Not slowly, not abruptly. She just... sits up. Then she stands. Then she walks to her door and opens it and the camera shifts to a hall one. There's audio on these, but it's silent as well, the only way Jon knows the audio is playing is the subtle static of the mics.

“I don't remember any of this,” Sansa whispers, but in the silence of the room they can all hear her.

Video Sansa walks down the hall, not slow, not fast. Just walks. She doesn't hesitate at corners or stairs, and Pod has cut together the footage so seamlessly, he barely notices the camera switches. The only real blank spot is the stairs up to the attic – she disappears from the third floor hallway and then the video cuts to the attic.

“I forgot about the other camera,” Jon says.

“Yeah,” Pod pauses the video. “I uh... have some stuff from your time up there, but we'll get to that later.”

Stuff from his time... the thought unnerves him. He'd turned off the camera on the tripod, but he'd completely forgotten about the one mounted in the corner. He wonders what he'll see, what he'll hear. He wonders what Pod found.

On the attic camera, the door opens and she walks in, shuts the door behind her, and then walks to the window. The window is out of frame, but they all know where it is. She's off camera for a while and Pod scans through nearly forty minutes of footage before they watch her run across the room to the door and try to open it. Jon watches her pick up the walkie, watches her stand up, watches her talk into the walkie as she takes slow steps. Jon knows how this ends but he finds himself holding his breath with each slow, methodical step towards the window.

“I was going to jump.” Next to him, Sansa sounds horrified, like she's just remembered. “It's all I could think about. That I should just jump.”

“Sansa, if you've been thinking about...” Brienne starts but Sansa shakes her head.

“No, it's not...” she lets out a frustrated sigh. “I've never... not really, you know? It was like... I just kept _hearing..._ ” She shakes her head almost violently, like she's trying to banish the thoughts from her head or make herself remember. “It's like something was telling me to. But it was also me? I don't know how to explain it. Like it... like it took every thought in my head and _twisted_ it.”

Arya's hand is gripping her arm so hard, Jon wonders how Sansa doesn't seem to notice.

“You said things,” Meera says from her chair, not making eye contact with Bran, who's begun to pace the short length between the wall and the bed. “I guess a lot of it makes sense with jumping, but... you mentioned talking to someone? Or someone leaving?”

Jon had been in a blind panic last night, he barely remembers hearing anything past _Sansa's in the attic_. He'd gone into autopilot, he almost didn't notice what was happening until he was at the central stairs and she was there, pale and trembling in the dark and when he'd gotten to her, when he touched her, she'd been so _cold_. From the video, it looks like she'd been standing at the open window for almost an hour before coming out of her... trance? Possession?

“I don't know,” Sansa says but from the way her entire body goes still, he thinks she does know. Meera doesn't press and neither does anyone else.

“I think maybe,” Pod says into the dead air, “we can watch the stuff from Jon's solo in the attic? Maybe it'll give some context to some things.”

“There's _more_?” it's Arya this time, sounding like she's just about had it with the ghost and is ready to go up there and fight it (he feels a kinship with her in this and he thinks, not for the first time, that he and Arya have a lot in common).

“Just a bit.” Pod clicks around and opens a different file.

Another video opens and Jon sees himself on the tripod camera. He hates watching himself, but if Sansa can go through watching her own videos ( _twice_ now), he can watch his.

_Uh, Alys, hey. I'm Jon_.

Video Jon looks like he'd rather be doing anything else. Video Jon continues to talk and then spins around to look behind him with a muttered _fuck_.

Pod pauses.

“I felt cold,” Jon explains. He feels like an idiot, he doesn't know all their ghost hunting lingo, he doesn't know the terms for things, so he feels like a child describing it as _cold_ when it was much more than that. “That's also when I noticed the window.”

“Was the cold from the window or something else?” Meera asks.

“Something else.”

On camera, Jon watches himself radio the others, trying to get one of them to admit to leaving the window open. Then he gets up and walks off camera to it and they hear it slam shut.

When he's back in the chair, video Jon says _Alys, if you're here, do something_.

When Jon was in the attic, there had been silence. Now... now he hears a whisper.

_I'm here_.

Next to him, Sansa's hands curl into fists in the quilt under her, Arya's hand still tight on her arm. Bran pauses in his pacing and instead leans against the wall.

_Come on_ , video Jon says and he can hear the anger in his own voice. _Show me how scary you can be_.

There's no whisper this time.

(What was he thinking, baiting it like this? What if that's why it happened?)

_Or maybe ghosts aren't fucking real. This is bullshit._

The tripod camera shuts off and the view switches from the close up to the wide angle camera. Jon watches himself stand and close his eyes and take deep breaths. He stands there for a moment, at rest, and then his head turns ever so slightly to the right, a small smile forming, until his eyes open and he stumbles back and then leaves the room.

He'd already told them about the hand thing last night, on their way to the bar and he's thankful he doesn't have to explain it again.

* * *

Brienne insists that she needs to call the network, explain to them about a possible safety hazard. Jon watches her run a hand through her hair and she tries to figure out how to explain this. She won't, likely, he figures she'll probably make something up.

Until she gets the all clear from Tyrion, they're shutting down production and the others all agree that they can't stay at the inn, especially at night.

“Is there another hotel in town?” Bran asks. “I mean, as cozy as eight of us sleeping in your one bedroom cabin was...”

“There used to be a chain hotel nearby, but it closed down a few years ago, I think it went out of business once we reopened Harrenhal. Most people who come here are tourists and they want the whole _authentic experience_. There's a motel right outside of town, but it's... I mean, I think it's livable. Otherwise, the next closest is in Maidenpool.”

“It shouldn't be for too long,” Meera says. “I think we can check out the motel, if it's _real_ shady, we can figure it out from there.”

* * *

The motel _is_ shady, but they all agree to stay because the rooms are cheap and there's enough vacant on such short notice.

The man behind the counter (who Jon knows he's seen around town but doesn't remember the name of) checks them in and leers at Arya the whole time.

“We don't have to stay here,” Sansa whispers as they walk themselves to their rooms (they turn down the desk clerk's offer of help).

“He tries anything, Arya'll tear him apart,” Gendry shrugs.

* * *

Sansa goes and buys cleaning supplies from the drugstore nearby and Jon watches her scrub their bathroom until it reeks of bleach and she seems satisfied. The others don't even try to fight her as she does the same to theirs.

“Maybe I can buy some sheets in town,” she says, eyeing up the thin floral bedding with her nose scrunched. Which is how Jon finds himself at one of the few chain stores in town, buying clearance sheets. He thinks it's a waste of money to buy sheets for the night and he almost says it, but shuts his mouth when Arya shakes her head at him.

“Sometimes you just have to let her,” Bran says lowly, keeping his voice down so Sansa can't hear. She's at the checkout counter buying five sets of sheets. Again, Jon thinks is this ridiculous. “Sometimes you just need to let her... control stuff. It makes her feel better.”

None of them argue when she goes back to the motel and strips their bedding down and changes the sheets. When she's done, she stands in the room and looks around like she's trying to find something else to fix.

“And sometimes,” Arya mutters, “you have to know when to make her stop or she'll drive herself crazy.”

“Ok!” Meera chirps, sounding way too enthusiastic. “We have the rest of the afternoon off, who wants to go into town and find something fun to do?”

* * *

With December approaching, the town is in full tourist mode. It starts in September, when everyone from the bigger cities start flocking out to the countryside to watch the leaves turn and pretend they're farmers or something, coming to pick apples and pumpkins and take hayrides. It's dumb (he thinks Sansa would love it and he almost wishes she'd gotten here early enough to see it).

Now, with Christmas soon approaching, it's switched from harvest season into winter. It always amuses him, it's something he and Val and Jarl have bonded over – how the South thinks they have _winter_. It barely snows here, usually only in the dead of winter, and usually not that much. But still, the town pretends like it knows what winter is.

“Paintball!” Arya cries, looking at one of the flyers tacked onto the community board near his favorite coffee shop. “Come on!”

The others all voice their agreement, but Jon feels himself freeze up. He doesn't want to go, he never wants to hold another gun in his life, even if it's fake. Not ever.

“But I wanted to go to the museum!” Sansa pouts. “Jon, I want to go to the museum!”

There's a small museum in town dedicated to the nearby Isle of Faces. In all his time here, Jon's never been, despite it being one of the biggest attractions in town.

“Boring,” Arya sighs.

“Well, you guys go do paintball, we'll go to the museum. Right? You'll take me?” She's holding onto his arm and giving him a wide smile and he nods and tries not to let his relief show on his face.

The others walk off and Sansa watches them go. When they're far enough away, she turns to him and says “unless you want to? You didn't seem like you wanted to.”

“No,” it takes him a moment to realize what she's done. “No, I didn't.” She nods like she was expecting him to say that. He clears his throat and tries not to think about it. “Museum?”

“Or we can do whatever, it was just he first thing I thought of.”

“No,” he says, “I've never been.”

And so he finds himself at the Museum of Faces, a building he's walked past a million times but never entered. It's not like the museums in bigger cities, but there's enough to see that it takes them nearly two hours to walk through.

Sansa reads every plaque, marvels over every display. They talk about how different the South views the Children of the Forest versus the stories they'd grown up hearing in the North. It feels comforting in a way he didn't think it would. They'd both spent their childhood in the North, going South when their parents died (well, his mother, his dad died mere weeks after he was born). It was a strange experience and it's even stranger to find someone who shares it. Who knows the same stories he does, who knows what it's like to be the _weird Northerner_ in their Southron classes. The North has been a part of Westeros for hundreds of years but it's still treated like a different world.

She knows what it's like to lose your whole world, to cling to the remnants of your family. He tells her more about Dany, tells her how they lost touch. She tells him about her Uncle Benjen, who was never the same after his brother died, who slipped away like Dany had, the weight of their family ghosts too heavy to bear.

He tells her about Viserys and her hand fits into his, her fingers threading through. She tells him about her Aunt Lysa and Uncle Petyr, about tense summers spent in the Vale.

He tells her about Val and the girl from Mole's Town. She tells him about some asshole boyfriend in high school (he'd like to track this kid down and punch him, from the way she describes him) and one from college.

They've led such different lives and yet she understands him in a way no one else ever has. Not even Sam (though he's tried, gods bless Sam).

* * *

They meet up with the rest back at the motel and Sansa laughs at the paint splatters that cover them (Arya and Brienne notably less than than the others). Jon and Sansa had picked up food from Jon's favorite diner in town and they eat it in Arya and Gendry's room.

“I'll have an answer from the network tomorrow,” Brienne tells them, which brings the mood down again. “So tomorrow we spend in town, no going back to the inn.”

“It's my inn,” Jon hears himself grumble and the others laugh. Brienne even gives a soft smile and nods in acknowledgment.

* * *

He's not sure why he has a room with Sansa.

Well, he knows. But he's not sure he thought this through.

She's leaned up against his side, their backs against the headboard, the TV flickering as they watch some old black and white movie. He recognizes some of the actors, but he's never seen it and if pressed, he'd be unable to remember anything about what's happened so far, because Sansa's hand is resting on his thigh and she keeps idly smoothing it up and down. It's maddening, really.

“Sans,” he says finally. “We need to have a talk about your wandering hands.” At that he picks her hand up in his and holds it out in front of her, like he's showing her evidence.

“You didn't like it?” she asks, but there's a tinge of red to her cheekbones.

“You know that's not what I mean,” he sighs. “But if you don't stop-”

“I bought condoms,” she cuts in and then looks horrified with herself, her face flushing a bright red. She curls her knees up to her chest and buries her face into them with a pathetic whimper.

It takes him a moment to really get himself together (he remembers her in the drugstore buying all of the cleaning supplies, he remembers the strange look on her face, the way she'd told him not to come to the counter with her).

“That's, uh, responsible of you?” he manages to get out and she groans into her kneecaps.

“This is the least sexy thing ever,” she whines. “I had it all planned...”

He laughs and her head jerks up and she glares at him, her face still a bright scarlet. It's the tears in her eyes that kills him, though.

“You don't need to _plan_ anything,” he shifts so that he's facing her and he grips her ankles and tugs her legs straight so she can't hide in her knees again. “Look, the last few days have been a lot and I think maybe we should slow down a bit. But you don't ever need to _seduce_ me. When the time comes, _if_ the time comes, I promise you I'll take zero effort. Basically you just have to exist and I'm good to go.”

That makes her smile, like he hoped it would (it's also not a lie). And though he'd love to take her up on the offer, he's not sure this shady motel with it's paper thin walls is the best place. With Sansa, under normal circumstances, he doesn't even think that would stop him, but this is anything but _normal._ They've both been in a heightened state of emotions for days and the last thing he wants is for her to regret this, for her to want this because she wants comfort, or because she's confusing adrenaline and fear with attraction.

She seems to understand that this is his hangup, because she looks him straight in the eye and says “It's not... I've thought about this for a long time. Since before you first kissed me.”

Her voice wavers in the admission, nearly a whisper at the end and her face is, if possible, even redder, but she doesn't look away from him. The idea nearly knocks him back, his heart pounds so furiously in his chest he thinks whoever's in the room next to them must hear it through the walls.

“I have, too,” he admits and he watches her eyes flutter closed, like she's relieved and he wonders how she didn't know. _How could she not have known_. Since the moment he came out of his office and saw her standing at the front desk, he was gone.

Except for him, it's not just attraction. And, he thinks, it's for good. He's gone, he's done, she's it for him, he feels it in his bones. In eight days when she packs up and leaves him, she'll move on with her life but he won't. Sure, he'll keep living. Maybe find another Val some day if he gets lonely enough. But Sansa is _it_ for him (there's a word for that, but he won't let himself think it). But she's young, she'll move on and some day this will just be some story she tells at parties, he'll just be a character in it, maybe one she remembers fondly, though his face and voice will have faded from her mind and she'll mix up details about him with others who have come and gone.

She leans forward, one hand coming up to press over his still wildly beating heart, and she kisses him and he decides if this is all he gets, if he only ever gets one night, it's what he'll take.

(And he knows he'll hold on to it for the rest of his life, long after she's forgotten about him).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little breather
> 
> (also I just want to say, I am living for the comments and all the theories have been killing me because I can't respond to any of them without spoiling it and some of you are right and others have come up with stuff that is SO INTERESTING and makes me wish I could write that, too)


	13. in which Sansa has been chasing a dream

When he touches her it's like nothing she's ever felt before.

Not because he's physically different from the others, though he is; his hands are rougher, his lips are softer, his hair longer, his shoulders broader. No, it's different because it finally feels like it _means_ something. He doesn't treat her like glass like Willas did, he's not careless like Joffrey. Every touch, every kiss feels like it has a purpose. He takes his time and takes her apart and she can't keep quiet, just like he promised.

He takes so much time with her that she thinks she'll shatter into a thousand pieces.

He makes her come twice with his hands and mouth before he even rolls one of the condoms on (bless those, bless their convenient placement and her impulse decision to buy them). When he eases into her, she nearly loses her breath and he lets out a deep groan and she wants to gloat and say _see, you can't keep quiet either_.

She feels so sensitive from the first two orgasms and she can feel herself winding up and up and up to a third. His hands on her skin, his lips on her neck, the way he moves inside her, it's all so much and she can't believe how quickly she's going to come again. Without meaning to, before she can stop herself, she whispers _I love you_ into his ear and the hand on her thigh tightens almost painfully and his hips stutter and his whole body shudders against hers as he comes. His muscles eventually relax and she feels him release a held breath against her neck and she hears him mutter out apologies into the hollow of her throat. She's not sure what he's apologizing for, she's already come twice and sure, maybe he wound her up again and she was just on the brink of a third... she assumes he's apologizing because he finished quicker than he was expecting and she wants to tell him it doesn't matter, but then she remembers what she said right before.

_I love you_.

It hangs in the air and he won't lift his face up from her neck.

“Jon,” she breathes, unsure what to say or how to address it. He makes a small grunting noise and he moves enough so that his hand can snake between them but she's quickly coming down from her high, her panic washing any remnants of arousal away. “No,” she pushes his hand away and he pulls out of her completely and rolls to face away from her and dispose of the condom.

It had all been going so well, it was so _perfect_ until she had to open her stupid mouth.

_I love you_.

She feels like the words are echoing around the silent room and she wishes she could snatch them out of the air and shove them back down her throat. It's too soon, she knows it's too soon, she doesn't want to trap him or make him feel guilty. He doesn't have to love her back. She should tell him it was a mistake, that he misheard.

Except he _didn't_. She loves him and the idea of lying and saying she doesn't... she can't do it. She _won't_ do it. She doesn't love many people in this world, she keeps it close to her chest and it feels good to let it out, even if he'll reject her. The words are already out there and she won't take them back.

“You don't have to say it back or anything,” her voice wavers and she wishes she could be stronger. But she's wrung out, her body feels raw, her nerve endings exposed. She sits up and she can feel the muscles in her thighs trembling.

“You don't mean it,” he says gruffly, head turning just slightly but he still won't look at her. He stays at the edge of the bed, shoulders tense and hunched forward, facing away from her.

She's a little taken aback by that and it takes a moment for her to identify the feeling in her chest as anger. “What do you mean I don't mean it?” her voice still shakes, she's on the verge of tears now. She hates that she cries during confrontation; she cries when she's angry or stressed or overwhelmed.

He sighs and she watches him bring his hands up to rub at his face. “This is what I was talking about, it's been a lot these past few days, and...”

“And what, I don't know my own feelings?” her hands are shaking now and she scrambles for the top sheet to bring up to cover herself, though he's not even looking at her. “I'm too stupid to understand how I feel?”

“You know that's not what I mean,” he finally turns to face her. “But I've done this before. A high stress situation, constantly being in danger, mistaking that for love.”

Ygritte, he means. She remembers him talking about not knowing whether he loved her or not, his uncertainty about his own feelings.

She wants to be furious with him, except... except he looks so _sad_. He looks resigned and sad and she remembers the way he'd immediately come when she said she loved him and something clicks in her brain and she feels a swooping inside her stomach.

“Jon, I loved you _before_ all this. Before you even kissed me that second time.” Because that's when the fear had really started, that slamming door after they kissed. And she hadn't known it then, but she already loved him. She thinks she's loved him for a while, for a lot longer than she realizes. It had happened so slowly, she hadn't even noticed it; each moment spent together, each new piece of information she learned about him, pulling her deeper and deeper.

“You don't,” he says but there's something almost wild in his eyes as he searches her face for the lie.

“And I think you love me,” she forces the words out (a gamble, but one she needs to take). “I think you love me, too.”

For a moment he doesn't react, he doesn't move, and then he surges forward and takes her face in both his hands and crashes his lips to hers. It's a desperate kiss and when he pulls back, he shakes his head slightly and says “you don't know what you're getting into, I'm a mess.”

“So am I,” she can't help the way she laughs when she says it, she feels giddy and dizzy and... _happy_.

He keeps his hands on either side of her face, gentler now, and he stares at her like he's trying to memorize her face and she feels herself start to blush. After everything they've just done, she's not sure why _this_ is what makes her feel the most open and vulnerable.

  
“I do,” he says quietly after what feels like a lifetime. He swallows visibly and she realizes he's scared and that makes her feel better, that's she's not alone in this. “I love you, too.”

They can both be scared together, she thinks.

* * *

When morning finally dawns, she groans and tries to bury her face into the pillow. Jon is up and he's pulled the curtain open to let the sunlight flood in and she almost grabs her phone off the bedside table and throws it at him.

“Arya texted,” he tells her as he walks back towards the bed and she tries to keep her eyes on his face.

She's learned that Jon has no problem being naked and she envies him his lack of modesty. The times she'd gotten up to run to the bathroom last night had been a test of her own confidence, she'd watched him do it with no qualms and felt like she should, too, but it had been nerve wracking. She isn't sure what the difference is – he'd seen her naked all night but somehow the minute she's out of bed it feels like she should cover herself. Even now, she has the sheets pulled up to her chest as he stands completely naked at the edge of the bed.

“Of course Arya texted,” she sighs. “She always finds a way to meddle.”

“She wants breakfast. I didn't respond, I wanted to see what you wanted to do.”

What she wants is to lay in bed all day with him. She wants to have food delivered to the room and watch movies on the much-too-small-for-the-room TV. She wants to be _normal_.

“Sam also texted.”

Sansa knows Jon dropped Ghost off at their apartment yesterday, she knows he gave them a brief rundown of what happened. Whatever happens now, she knows Sam and Gilly should be a part of it, it's their inn, too.

“I guess we should go see everyone,” she sighs. It's absolutely not what she wants, but now isn't the time to be self indulgent.

“I guess,” he says, but his eyes are on the edge of the sheet she has clutched to her chest and she feels her heart stutter for a moment.

“I guess,” she repeats as his hand reaches out and takes the sheet between his thumb and forefinger and he starts to slowly pull it out of her grasp.

She almost screams in frustration when a knock makes his hand drop from her and he throws a glare at the door and then bends down and picks up his jeans from yesterday and pulls them on quickly. A second knock and he's got his shirt on and Sansa pulls the sheets up almost to her eyes.

He opens the door just a crack and blocks the view into the room with his body.

“You guys didn't respond,” Arya's voice filters in.

“Yeah, sorry, we were just talking about what we wanted to do for breakfast.”

There's a pause where Arya doesn't say anything and Sansa wonders if she's putting things together (Jon wearing the same clothes as yesterday, the fact that neither of them are out of bed when usually they're both up before dawn). After a moment, Arya finally speaks again.

“At least text me back.” Her voice is quiet and any residual anger Sansa had at the interruption vanishes. “I just need to know...”

“We're ok,” Jon's voice is soft. “Next time we'll text back.”

The tone of Arya's voice makes her get out of bed and she finds her own sweater from yesterday on the ground and it's long enough to cover the important parts and she makes her way over to the door. She tugs on the door to open it a bit wider and Arya gives her a once over but doesn't say anything.

“We can go for breakfast,” she tells Arya. “Give us a little? We can all go for breakfast.”

“Yeah ok. But don't take too long, I'm timing you,” she directs this at Jon with a glare and the tension breaks and Jon rolls his eyes and shuts the door in her face.

* * *

After quick showers, they meet everyone and head to the same diner they picked up food from last night. Wyn's sister Wylla works here and she always gives Jon extra fries with his order and so she's his favorite waitress. Today, she helps them slide three tables together and Sam and Gilly meet them.

Brienne and Pod left early this morning on a trek down to King's Landing and Sansa wonders what they're going to tell Tyrion.

They fill Sam and Gilly in (in hushed tones, making sure no one at the surrounding tables can hear them). Both Sam and Gilly don't question any of this and Sansa thinks it's because of Jon. If Jon believes, they believe. They always seemed more open to the idea anyway, at least in the sense that they weren't _opposed_ to it like Jon had been.

(She's broken that now, shattered his whole worldview. Guilt pools in her stomach and she wishes they'd just stayed in their room.)

Eventually the conversation drifts to what they'll do until they hear from Brienne.

“We could go to the actual Isle of Faces,” Sam suggests after hearing that they went to the museum yesterday. “I know it's gotten really touristy, but it's still really interesting.”

Arya groans. “I already finished school, I shouldn't have to be subjected to field trips.”

“Sounds cool,” Gendry shrugs and Arya shoots him a glare but then nods her consent. Sam's face lights up and Sansa wonders how many times he's gone and if he has the whole tour memorized.

“We've got something to do,” Bran says and Meera nods.

“Sounds cryptic,” Arya drawls.

“Just some research stuff,” Meera says and Sansa wonders if it's for school.

Arya graduated in May and Sansa's been out for over two years now, but Bran and Meera are in their last year. They somehow convinced the school to let them take this semester off and get credits for a work study, since they're making a TV show and they're majoring in film studies.

“You're all _nerds_ ,” Arya huffs dramatically, throwing her eyes to the ceiling like being around them is _such_ a chore.

* * *

The Isle of Faces _is_ touristy and she was right, Sam has the entire program memorized. They go around without the tour guide and Sam excitedly tells them everything (even Arya seems interested and Sansa thinks Sam missed his calling as a teacher, if he can get _Arya_ invested in history).

As the day slips by and the sky gets darker, she feels a weight settle over her. Today was the first day she's felt normal in such a long time and she doesn't want it to end. She wants her life to be this – Jon, her family, their friends, doing normal things. She wants to be _boring_.

She never realized it before, that what she wants is just to be surrounded by the people she loves and live a normal, boring life. She's always felt untethered and lost; restless. It hadn't been until Jon said it the other day that she realized.

_I'd never want to do anything else._

Standing in his living room that day, it felt like he'd reached deep into her soul and pulled out the core of her.

It's all she's ever done.

She's spent her life searching for any way to see her mom again. To see dad again. To see Robb again. It's like her life stopped the moment she saw her mother in the kitchen. She has spent her entire life trying to see their ghosts, trying to talk to them, feeling bitter and disappointed every time it failed. And under it all, the little doubt in the back of her mind that maybe she made it all up. Maybe she didn't see mom. Maybe she was _wrong_.

But being wrong meant she'd wasted years of her life chasing a dream.

* * *

Brienne and Pod are there when they get back, looking grim.

“Tyrion said that it's up to us. We have enough footage to make the show, it's up to us whether we continue or not. Though he _strongly encourages_ that we do.”

Bran and Meera are also back from wherever they'd been, Bran seeming like he's on edge.

Everyone in the room turns to look at her and Sansa realizes that they're going to make her decide. She doesn't want that responsibility, she hates making decisions. But she also knows that none of them will do anything without her consent.

“I think we should keep going,” she finally says. “If everyone's ok with it. But not... not like we have been. I think we need to figure out what's going on and if we can do something about it.”

Next to her, she can sense that Jon doesn't want this, but he doesn't argue. She knows he feels guilty for what's happened, though he shouldn't. She's the one who came barging into his life, disrupting whatever ghosts were in Harrenhal.

“Ok,” Brienne nods. “We go back tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

As she and Jon head to their room, Bran chases after her and grabs her arm.

“Can we talk?” he says and his eyes flick to Jon. She nods and Jon seems to realize Bran wants to talk alone, because he kisses her temple and heads off to their room. Meera is nowhere in sight. “Are you sure you're ok to do this?”

“I wouldn't have said I was if I wasn't.”

He laughs at that. “Yes, you would.”

She doesn't know what to say to that so she just shrugs and says “I need to keep going. I don't know how to explain it, but I can't just leave.”

Bran nods slowly and something seems to break in him and he suddenly throws his arms around her and it takes her a moment to realizes that the shaking is him and that he's _crying_.

“I can't lose you, too,” he mumbles into the top of her head and she doesn't know what to do. Bran doesn't _cry_. He's always been driven and ambitious, a little cold and distant, always acting like he knows more than everyone else. She always let him because she knew it was like her need to fix everything, like Arya's anger; a way to feel in control.

But there was a shift she felt after the four of them – her and Arya and Bran and Rickon – had talked about mom and dad and Robb. Whatever changed that day, it _changed._ And now he's crying.

“You won't lose me,” she pulls away from him and wipes at the tears on his cheeks like she used to when they were kids, back in Winterfell, back when he _did_ cry. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“This is all my fault, I never should've forced you into this. I can't... Meera says...” he takes a deep breath and doesn't seem to know how to continue.

“You didn't force me into anything,” she feels defensive. She knows she likes to keep everyone happy, but she isn't _helpless_. “We all agreed to do this.”

“Oh come on,” he breaks into a harsh laugh. “I started the whole show, I _begged_ you to do it. I wanted to make something so bad, I used... I never believed in any of this. Not ever, but I used you because I wanted to make a show.”

Maybe he did. Maybe he used her belief in ghosts to create something that he hoped would help his career. Maybe he used her guilt and need to please everyone to get her to agree to it.

“It doesn't matter,” she says and she knows it's true. “It doesn't matter. We're here now. And... I think maybe we're supposed to be.”

He looks incredulous, he doesn't believe her, but with every passing moment she's more and more certain. They're supposed to be here. They were supposed to do this.

Because look where it's gotten them – they talked about mom and dad and Robb for the first time _ever_. Bran is _apologizing_. She has accepted, fully and truly, that they love her. She found Jon. She thinks she finally realizes what she wants out of life now, she understands that she's wasted too much time looking towards the past.

So who cares how it started, if this is where they are now.

“Oh come on,” Bran groans, “now _you're_ crying?” She laughs because, yes, she is.

“I cry at everything,” she reminds him and then he laughs, too, and he looks younger than his twenty one years. He looks like the little boy she remembers from Winterfell.

* * *

Jon's waiting up for her when she gets back and he takes one look at her red eyes and frowns.

“I'm ok,” she says. He doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't push. She'll tell him about it, but not tonight. She's not sure she wants to delve into the complexities of her relationship with Bran tonight, try to explain all the ways they've hurt each other over the years and danced around the gaping hole in their lives without ever talking about it.

“Come here,” he reaches out and takes her wrist lightly and tugs her onto the bed and then slides his arms around her and she relaxes into him. After a while, he sighs. “We go back tomorrow.”

“We go back tomorrow,” she confirms.

They go back tomorrow, and then there's six days left.

* * *

“Ok,” Bran is standing in the middle of the music room. He has a bundle of papers stacked on the table and he's gathered them all here. “We went to King's Landing yesterday,” he nods at Meera. “I think maybe we found something that could help.”

“Why didn't you tell us this last night?” Arya frowns.

“Well, it was getting late for one. Also, I figured I should do this with the cameras here. You know, hopefully this makes good TV.” At that, he turns to face one of the cameras mounted in the corner and gives it a wave and Sansa knows all of that will be cut out.

“So we went to look at military records,” Meera explains, starting to shift through the pile of papers and next to her, Jon tenses up. But then Meera pulls out a photocopy of an old military database and it's _old_. Like handwritten old. And from the crest at the top, she can see it's for the regular army, not the Watch. “Here,” she points to a name. “Aemond Rivers.”

“Alys's husband,” Bran cuts in. “Remember, we heard his name on the one recording?”

“You _thought_ you heard his name,” Jon points out.

“I'm sorry,” Bran says, “are you _still_ trying to say ghosts aren't real?”

That seems to shut Jon up and she almost laughs at his pout.

“Ok, Aemond Rivers: enlists in the army, leaves his pregnant wife Alys when they're deployed to Volantis, dies in combat less than a month before Alys's baby is stillborn. A month after that, she throws herself out the window of the east wing attic.”

A chill runs down her spine and she hears the words whispering in her ear. _You could always jump. It's not such a long way down_.

“Ok, so we're all in agreement that it's Alys,” Arya starts slowly, eyes on the paperwork. “But why Sansa? Why now? Nothing like this has ever happened before, right?”

Sam and Gilly shake their heads no. Gilly has refused to bring Little Sam, she left him with her sister for the day and Sansa almost wanted to tell them that they shouldn't come and get more mixed up in this either, but it felt hypocritical and so she hadn't.

“That is a good question,” Bran says in his know it all voice and she watches Arya throw him a glare that he doesn't notice. “We searched and searched until we found this.”

He pulls out another photocopy, this time of a painting of a soldier. It's small, it looks like something you'd put in a locket and give to a loved one.

“Aemond Rivers,” Bran says. “Does he look familiar?”

They all look at the painting and it's hard to make out because it's so small and old. She's looking at a man in his late twenties, long dark hair pulled back, serious set to his mouth.

“Jon,” Meera finally says when none of them answer.

“What?” Jon's voice almost cracks. “He doesn't look like me.”

“Not totally,” Bran explains. “But think about it – dark hair, dark eyes. You've got a beard and he doesn't, but he probably did at one point. Around the same age, military. You take a grieving ghost and let her sit for a few hundred years and maybe she loses some of the memory of what he looked like _exactly_. Maybe he fades a bit but the basics remain.”

“I can kind of see it,” Sam tilts his head to look at the painting from a different angle.

“You think a ghost thinks I'm her dead husband.”

“That's the theory,” Bran shrugs. “It's the best we've got. Alys sees who she thinks is her husband kiss some other girl and it sets something off.”

Jon stares at the painting in silence before he finally steps back. “I need to walk Ghost,” he says and then turns and leaves the room and they can hear his footsteps through the lobby towards the back door.

“He took it better than I thought he would,” Meera says in the silence that follows.

“I'll go,” Sansa's already half out the door and following him.

She's not sure what to think and her mind races, trying to fit it all together. She'd been so focused on it being Ygritte for so long, she missed the most obvious clues. That everything seemed to happen in the east wing, that it concentrated in the attic. That it wanted her to jump, that it used her feelings of loss and loneliness to try and convince her. She remembers the despair she felt in that attic, looking at the open window. _It's not such a long way down_. She wonders if that was Alys's last thought.

She catches up with Jon at the edge of the woods and she doesn't know what to say so instead she takes his hand and threads her fingers through his and she walks with him to his cabin. She stays with him as he walks Ghost. They don't talk and she thinks that's ok because they'll figure it out.

They'll figure it out and they can be scared together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to wrap this up well before Halloween so that it's complete by then. I think 2 chapters left tbh and this time I'm sticking to the plan (probably).


	14. in which Jon closes a window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, a bit of a trigger warning for suicidal thoughts/ideas, though no worse or different from the prior chapters

“A séance,” Jon says and he's not sure if it's a statement or a question.

“Sansa's right, we can't be passive in this,” Meera holds her laptop to face the rest of them with some website up about the rituals of the old gods and the Children of the Forest.

He doesn't try to argue as the rest of them discuss the different theories and methods. He can feel a throbbing behind his eyes and he all he wants to do is take Sansa back to his cabin and spend the whole day in bed with her. He doesn't want to be doing _this_.

“Jon?” Sansa's voice cuts through and he opens his eyes to see the others are dispersing.

“Sorry," he realizes he's missed the entire conversation.

“You don't have to do it with us,” she looks down at his chest and starts to tug on the hem of his shirt, giving a little shrug. “We can do it ourselves.”

Of course he's not letting her do this without him. He's not letting her anywhere _near_ that attic without him. He won't tell her this, of course; she's gotten more and more defensive about her safety over the past few days and he knows she'll just argue with him.

“Seems important that I'm there if she thinks I'm her husband,” is what he says instead and she still won't look at him. He won't push, he knows her well enough by now to know she'll eventually say what's on her mind.

“I'm sorry I dragged you into this.”

He lets out a sigh. “You didn't drag me into this. I made my own choices, same as you. And for what it's worth, I'm glad you did.”

At that she does look up and she finally smiles again (which, really, isn't that his ultimate goal at this point?)

* * *

He watches Sansa and Ghost play fetch and he thinks he could get used to it.

They haven't talked about what happens after all of this, about what they'll do. Riverrun isn't an obscene distance from Harrenhal, but it's not a quick trip, either. Weekend visits would be out – he knows she has a job as a waitress back in Riverrun and weekends are the busiest days here, too. With their schedules he'll get to see her once, maybe twice a week. And what past that? Does she move here, move in with him? His cabin isn't fancy, would she be happy there? Would she be happy in a small town? And what if they had kids some day-

The idea jolts him out of his reverie and he tries to push those thoughts out of his head.

“I think I wore him out,” she calls out and he looks up to find Ghost flopped on the ground and panting.

“Good, maybe he won't be obnoxious for the rest of the day,” he directs this at Ghost, who happily ignores him, and walks over to where she's still holding the ball they'd been playing with.

They head back to his cabin and he tries to ignore the weight of his phone in his pocket. He's vividly aware of it, waiting for it to go off at any moment with a call or a text from one of the others saying they're ready, that everything's prepared. He knows, rationally, that they likely won't call before it gets dark – things only seem to happen at night and that's likely when they'll do this _séance_.

It's not until they're sitting on the couch with the game idly playing on TV in the background that she talks about it.

“Do you really think it's Alys? You think Bran's theory is right?”

He sighs and watches one of the players on screen dive for the ball and miss spectacularly. “Is there any way to be sure? I mean, I guess it makes the most sense. It makes more sense than...” he almost says Ygritte but he stops himself. It still feels strange saying her name so casually after years of not talking about her. “I'm glad it's not,” he admits.

“Me too. I thought maybe it was because you said you saw her last year, but...”

“I'm starting to think that wasn't even real,” he laughs. It's something he's been thinking about but hasn't said out loud. “I was so tired that night, and you had told me the story of your mom and what you saw, and I felt guilty about the way I kissed you and I don't know, maybe guilty for moving on when I still feel responsible for her death...” he trails off and lets the idea hang.

“Sometimes I think maybe my mom wasn't real, either.”

Her voice is so low he almost doesn't hear her over the roar of the spectators on TV. She looks so sad when she says it, so lost, and he thinks he understands. The idea that Ygritte _hadn't_ been real? That he'd agreed to do the show because of her when it was just his imagination and found out that ghosts were real anyway? It makes him feel insane, like he can't trust his own mind. If he made up Ygritte, does that mean he's making up everything else?

Except the others are experiencing it, too. It's on video and audio. What are the odds that ten of them are completely crazy and hearing the same things?

“Maybe they weren't,” he says slowly, softly; he doesn't want to upset her. “Maybe they weren't real, but we're here all the same.”

She's silent for a while but she doesn't seem angry with him.

“I had this idea,” she picks up his hand and runs her thumb over his knuckles slowly, like she's trying to memorize every ridge. “I had this idea that you were only into me because I was in trouble. Just like you thought the only reason I loved you was because I was afraid. But when I try to figure out the timeline of it all, I think we had it backwards. I think maybe we didn't fall in love because things started escalating, I think things started escalating because we were falling in love.”

She says the words so easily, it nearly takes his breath away. He said them the other night, he _meant_ them the other night, but they don't come as easy to him as they do to her.

“And I think,” she continues, “it's also because you started to believe. There's this theory in ghost hunting that people who are more open to experiences are more likely to attract supernatural activity. The more open you got to it, the more things started to happen.”

“So what, it feeds off our belief or something?”

“Belief,” she shrugs, “emotions. If it really is Alys and she died of heartbreak, it makes sense. You're tied to the inn, whether you like it or not. You own it, you work on it, you've put your heart into it. So when you start to believe, when you start falling in love, maybe that triggers something in Alys's spirit and she starts feeding off your energy.”

He doesn't say anything to that and he feels exhausted. All of this sounds like some nonsense those new-wave worshipers of the old gods would spout. The ones who wander naked on the Isle of Faces and take a bunch of psychedelics to _open their third eye to the raven_.

It's all nonsense.

Right?

* * *

“I need you to actually be ok with this,” Bran says and he stares straight at Sansa when he says it (like it wasn't her idea to begin with, like she isn't the one pushing for them to keep going).

“I'll be fine,” she says, taking the bag out of his hands. It had taken some time and money, but they'd finally gotten everything they need. A bundle of dried weirdwood leaves, an incredibly expensive and yet somehow tiny jar of weirwood sap, a bag of dirt from the roots of a weirwood tree (helpfully collected by Sam on a visit to the Isle of Faces), and a book of spells of the Children of the Forest.

A month ago, Jon would have looked at the collection of things Sansa has spread out on the floor and laughed. Now he feels dread slither down his spine as she starts flipping through the book.

“Gilly, did you find a bowl?” she asks and Gilly comes forward, holding a large bronze bowl.

“This should work, right? You said tin or bronze? I found this in the old pantry.” Sansa nods and Gilly places it on the floor of the attic, where the chair used to be, right in the center.

He stand backs as the others get to work. Bran reads from the book and Meera lights the bundle of weirwood leaves on fire and then blows it out until it's a smoking mass, charred at the end. She uses the ash to draw a seven pointed star around the bowl. Arya takes the book from Bran as Sansa opens the jar of sap. They both study a page in the book before Arya takes the jar from her, dips her finger into the sap, and starts to draw careful runes on Sansa's forehead and cheeks.

“Ok, so we have Sansa and Jon,” Bran says, pointing at two of the star tips. “And Sam and Gilly?”

“You don't have to,” Sansa says from where she's kneeling on the floor and something in Jon rebels at the sight of her with the weirwood sap painted on her face. It looks like blood and he wants to take her out of this attic and wash it off her.

“No, it makes sense,” Gilly says and kneels down and Arya repeats the process with her. Sam joins and Jon watches Arya draw the runes on him, too. “We're married and we have a connection to the inn.”

“Ok, so that's four,” Bran says.

Sansa takes the jar from Arya and stands and walks over to Jon and he doesn't fight as she paints the weirwood sap onto first his forehead, then right under both eyes. When she's done, she kisses him lightly and whispers _everything's gonna be ok_.

He's not sure he believes her.

“Five,” Arya says and sits at one of the star points and gestures for Sansa to come paint her face. There's a determination in the way she's holding herself and Jon understands. She's sitting at the star point next to Sansa's, with Jon on the other side. He knows it's stupid, but he understands Arya's desire to feel like she's doing _something_ to keep Sansa safe.

“You and me?” Meera asks Bran. “Another couple?”

“I think we have five people that will create a lot of energy to summon her,” Bran hesitates. “I think what we need are two anchors. Like, two people who can maybe keep everything grounded.”

At that, without question, Gendry steps forward and sits between Arya and Sam. To his surprise (though he probably shouldn't be surprised anymore), Brienne also steps forward and sits between Jon and Gilly. Sansa moves and paints their faces before handing the jar to Meera. In the center, Meera places the weirwood leaf bundle in the bowl and sets it on fire and pours the dirt in a circle around it and then finally lets the rest of the sap drip slowly into the burning bowl.

“Hands,” Bran murmurs and Jon takes one of Sansa's in his and Brienne's in his other.

He hates this and not for the first time he wishes he'd just put Sansa in his truck and driven them far, far away from here. They could go North, he thinks. He could take her back to Winterfell or maybe up to Last Hearth. He'd even go to Dorne again if that's what she wanted. Anywhere but _here_ , doing _this_.

Bran says some words in the language of the Children, his tongue stumbling over the unfamiliar phrases. Jon doesn't feel anything, he isn't sure he's supposed to. This is some ritual to speak to the dead, some sort of magic, and he wonders if he should feel it. What would magic even feel like?

A month ago, the idea of _magic_ would have made him roll his eyes.

Nothing seems to be happening and there's a sense of relief in him. They tried, time to go.

“Jon, try talking to her,” Meera says softly from the side.

He always feels stupid doing this, despite everything that's happened. Sansa's looking at him like she _believes_ in him, though, and that gives him the courage to speak.

“Uh, hey Alys,” he starts and he hears Arya snort with laughter. Sansa shushes her but there's a smile quirking her lips, too. “It's me. Jon. We've met.”

Nothing happens. He's not sure what's _supposed_ to happen. There weren't really guidelines. The book just said something like _and then the spirit will speak to you_. It didn't say how, it didn't give a lot of instructions past setting up the props and whatever Bran recited. Is there some specific way he should be speaking? If this is magic, is there some spell or chant he's supposed to do? Some magic word?

“We'd like to talk to you,” he says again into the empty air. “So if you're here, could you talk to me? I'd really like to talk to you.”

“I'm here,” Sansa says and everyone in the room turns to look at her.

She's looking at _him_ , though, and something in her eyes... he knows it's not Sansa anymore.

Everyone is silent and tense and the only thing he can think to do is talk.

“Alys,” he starts and Sansa leans towards him, her hand squeezing his tighter as she tries to pull her other hand from Arya's grip.

“You're here,” she breathes and tears well in her eyes. “I've been waiting for so long.”

What does he say? Does he pretend to be Aemond? Does he try to convince her that he's not? When he looks at the others, they're all watching with wide eyes and Bran makes a gesture between them, urging him to respond.

“I'm sorry?” it comes out a question and her eyebrows knit together.

“You left me.”

“I'm here now.”

Tears slip from her wide blue eyes and it's _wrong_. It's not Sansa. “I lost our son,” she whispers. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's... alright. It's ok.”

Is he saying the right thing? He's not good at this – at emotions, at saying the right words. Everything he says sounds stupid and hollow to his ears, but Sa- _Alys_ doesn't seem to notice.

She shakes her head and looks behind her and when he follows her gaze, he sees that the window is open and fear shoots through him. It hadn't been open before.

“Everyone leaves,” she whispers, still turned towards the window.

“I'm here now,” he tugs on her hand, “don't look at it.”

“I have to.”

“You don't,” he feels desperate now as she tries to pull her hand from his and he can see her doing the same to Arya's. Arya's face is deathly pale and her fingers are digging into Sansa's hand, trying to keep hold of it.

“I always do. It's the only way I can see you again.”

But she didn't, she got stuck here, condemned to live the moment over and over again.

“It's not such a long way down, you see,” she turns to face him again and she smiles, though there are still tears in her eyes. “It won't be so bad.”

“I'm here now,” he wants so badly to let go of Brienne's hand, to use both of his to keep her in place, but he can't because it would break the circle and Bran said that could be dangerous. Sansa's trying though, pulling desperately at both his and Arya's hands, looking over her shoulder at the open window like she can't help herself.

“I have to,” she repeats, “I always do.”

Something takes root in his mind, an idea, he suddenly feels like he _needs_ to say it.

“Alys, look at me,” he gives a sharp tug on her hand and she turns to face him and her forehead creases like she's confused. “Alys,” he locks his eyes to her and tries to put as much force behind his words as possible, “close the window.”

“It's all my fault, I lost our son,” her voice wavers.

“It's not your fault and I'm _sorry_ I never came home, but you have to close the window.”

“It's the only way.”

“It's _not,_ I promise. If you close the window, you can see me again. You can see _us_ again, but you have to _close the window_.”

The window slams shut.

“I love you,” she whispers and then her eyes close and she slumps forward a bit before her eyes flutter open and the fire in the bowl flickers out.

Bran claps his hands and says a word Jon doesn't recognize, the one Bran said would end the séance. As he does, they all let go and Jon moves towards Sansa as she raises her head. She's pale but when she looks at him, he can tell it's _her_ again. Arya's at her other side, holding her arm, propping her up. Sansa looks like she's about to say something, but then she pushes Arya away and moves forward and manages to grab the still-smoking bronze bowl and pull it to her before she vomits into it.

“Shit,” Arya breathes as Sansa hovers over the bowl and coughs violently.

“I'm ok,” Sansa gasps between coughs and Jon moves forward and does the only thing he can think and pulls her hair back from her face as she coughs and heaves. Finally she calms down and she sits back up and wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” Bran moves forward and kneels next to Arya.

“Language,” Sansa says without seeming to think about it and Bran chokes out a laugh.

“At least we know it's really her.” He's wiping at his eyes with shaking hands and Arya looks so pale he worries she's about to pass out.

“Water,” Brienne says and Pod runs out the door and down the stairs. He's back in record time, out of breath and holding one of the disposable cups they keep in the suite bathrooms in his hand, filled with water that's half sloshed out in his haste. He hands it to Bran who holds it on front of Sansa, who takes it from him and drinks whatever's left in the cup.

“I'm ok,” Sansa repeats, sitting up fully, though her shaking hands and the sheen of sweat on her face say otherwise. “I'm ok, she's gone.”

They all turn towards the window and Jon's heart skips a beat when he sees that it's still closed.

“What does that mean?” Sam asks in the silence that follows. “Is she gone from you or is she _gone_ gone?”

“I don't know,” Sansa closes her eyes and breathes for a moment. “I think she's _gone_ gone.”

“What was that about the window?” Meera asks and it takes Jon a moment to realize she's asking him.

“I'm not sure.” His own voice comes out shaky and when he looks down at his hands, he notices they're trembling and he squeezes them into fists to stop it. “I just... it felt like the right thing to say?”

None of them move or speak for what feels like ages, like they're waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

“What do we do now?” Arya finally asks.

“I'd like to brush my teeth,” Sansa makes a face down at the bowl she'd thrown up into.

“I think we're done for the night,” Brienne confirms and stands up.

It's strange, none of them quite seem to know what to do. Sansa lets Arya and Bran lead her downstairs (Arya grabbing the bowl despite Sansa's protests that it's gross and she could clean up after herself). Meera and Gendry follow with Pod and Brienne. Sam and Gilly stay for a moment and the three of them stand in the attic without a word.

It's empty. It _feels_ empty, but hadn't it before? He can't remember.

Was that it? Is she gone?

Was she even real to begin with?

* * *

The others choose to stay in their rooms at the inn that night and Sansa follows him back to his cabin and brushes her teeth and then he makes her take a shower to wash the runes off her face. The sap is hard to get out and he stands in the shower with her and carefully wipes every bit of it off of her with hands that he pretends aren't still shaking. She does the same to him and it feels strange to be taken care of, but he lets her and realizes that he wants to _keep_ letting her.

He only has one towel and he resolves to get more, to get all the towels she needs. He'll get better sheets, too. Nicer, softer. He wants to fill his house with things she'll like.

Ghost tries to wriggle in between them when they finally get into bed and Sansa giggles as Jon tries to push Ghost out.

“Let him stay,” she finally says with a grin as Ghost, for the third time, manages to wriggle out of Jon's grip and back onto the bed.

“Fine,” Jon grumbles. “You can stay at the _foot of the bed_.”

Ghost listens to that, at least.

He's just about to turn off the light when she grabs his arm. “Can you keep it on?” He nods and lays back down and lets her curl into his side. She's tense and he thinks they aren't going to get much sleep tonight. “I was still there.” Her voice is small and he lets his arm tighten around her but doesn't interrupt. “It felt like I was dreaming. I kept saying things and I didn't know why I was saying them. How long was I...”

“Couple minutes,” he guesses. When he says it, it sounds like no time at all.

“It felt longer,” she whispers. “Is that really it? Is it done?”

“I don't know what I was expecting,” he tells her, “but it wasn't that. I think I expected... I don't know, you know how in movies they make the ghost this evil thing? I feel like I kept expecting that. Something I could see, at least. Maybe something we had to fight.”

“Alys wasn't angry, though, not really,” she says. “Just sad.”

Just sad.

Sad and trapped and longing to get out. He hopes she has.

After a while, she says “what do we do now?”

“Sleep? Or try to. Tomorrow... I guess we figure it out from there.”

* * *

“I think the window was a portal,” Bran is saying as he and Meera sit in front of the camera.

They're in the music room again and they've got the setup for interviews. This is the last of it. The last two days of filming, before they all pack up and leave.

“A portal?” Arya snorts and rolls her eyes from behind the camera.

“Ok, maybe portal's the wrong word. Meera, you try to explain.”

“We were talking about it last night and I think maybe it was like... where she got caught. Like the window was the anchor that kept her here. The place where she made the decision to jump. We think she wanted forgiveness.”

Sansa is fidgeting with his hand, held in both of hers. She's nervous for the interview, he thinks it's the first time he's seen her nervous to be on camera. Bran and Meera finish up and Bran turns to Sansa.

“You ready?”

She nods and stands and Jon stands with her but stays back as she settles herself in front of the camera.

“We're going to start from the beginning,” Brienne reminds her. “Start from the beginning and describe what happened.”

Sansa smooths her hair down and shifts into her best posture and he watches her breathe in and out a few times to calm her nerves. When Bran turns the camera on, though, Jon would be hard pressed to tell she was anxious just moments before. She gives the camera a bright smile.

And then she begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again I'm making up my own supernatural rules so... you know, don't question them too much
> 
> (I've been debating for a long time how to end this. To make it a big confrontation, to make ghosts not even real, to end it a million different ways. In the end, I decided that it doesn't really matter. This is, at it's core, a love story.)


	15. an epilogue

“Here,” Sansa turns and shows off another perfect apple before dropping it into the basket in Jon's hand. “I'm going to make the best pie ever.”

She hears him sigh a bit and she turns an accusing glare at him. “Sans, I love you, but you're a terrible baker.”

“It's just _pie_ , how can I mess up pie?”

He looks like he has a few ideas but keeps them to himself. Good, she thinks. Just because her attempt at baking him a birthday cake had gone horribly wrong doesn't mean she'll mess up _everything_. She's baked before with... ok, _middling_ results, but a pie can't be that hard.

What else is she going to do with an entire basket full of apples? She supposes they could have just not gone apple picking, but it had seemed like so much fun. Two weeks ago when Jon had suggested she come down early to see all the autumn events the town had, she'd decided they were going to do every single thing. Apple picking, corn maze, hayride to the pumpkin patch. Back at Jon's, she's going to make him carve pumpkins with her, though it's much too early for Halloween.

Her stomach gives a little flip at the idea of Halloween.

Right, that's why she's here. It's only early September, but in just over a month, the show will be premiering. Has it really been almost a year? It feels like eons have passed but also, somehow, no time at all.

With each passing month, Alys and what happened last November seems to fade further and further from her memory. It feels like it happened to a different person, like something she read in a book or watched on TV. It doesn't feel like it happened to her, to _them_.

She's nervous to see it. That's what this weekend's all about – Tyrion had suggested a viewing for the show and so everyone will be congregating at Harrenhal for it. Jon had closed the inn for the weekend and everyone booked rooms and they'll watch the rough cut all together, that's what Tyrion said. She's not sure she wants to. It's been almost a year of not being on camera, it's been almost a year since she sat Bran and Arya and Meera and Gendry down and told them she didn't want to keep ghost hunting. She didn't want to keep living in the past (the quickness with which they'd agreed makes her think they also hadn't wanted to continue).

“Hey, you ok?” Jon's voice cuts through her thoughts and she realizes she's been staring at an apple in her hands without moving.

“I'm ok,” she smiles and drops the apple into the basket.

* * *

“Edd helped you,” Jon accuses around a mouthful of pie.

“He did not!” she defends, looking around at the others. None of them seem to believe her and Edd's eyes are pointed towards the kitchen ceiling in some poorly concealed attempt to look innocent. _Traitor._

“Who cares, it's not toxic,” Arya also talks with her mouth full and honestly, it sometimes weirds Sansa out how similar she and Jon can be. It's almost like he and Arya should be siblings, not _her_ and Arya.

“Well, thank you, Sansa,” Jeyne says kindly and next to her, Wyn nods eagerly.

“And Edd,” Jon grumbles.

“Can I have another?” Rickon asks, frowning down at his empty plate. Gendry is also looking forlornly at his empty plate and the last wedge of the pie in the tin. She'd had enough apples to make two pies, but it seems like maybe that wasn't enough. She forgot that Rickon and Gendry could both eat two pies _themselves_.

Rickon's in college now, the idea is so strange to her. He graduated high school in May and just started at River U and it feels unreal that her baby brother is an adult now. An adult with a _girlfriend_. He'd met Shireen the first week of college and they've apparently been inseparable ever since. It's been less than a month and Sansa wants to mother him and tell him to take it slow (but considering the timeline of her own relationship, she doesn't really have a leg to stand on).

Shireen's a sweet girl, though quiet and a bit serious. She seems older than her eighteen years and Sansa wonders if it's because of the large birthmark that covers half of her face (Sansa remembers what school was like, how cruel children can be, how quickly you grow up when you're the outsider). Shireen doesn't seem to laugh much, but she does with Rickon and it makes Sansa's heart melt.

“When does everyone else get here?” Wyn asks as Sansa doles out the last of the pie between Rickon and Gendry.

“I think people should start arriving in a few hours,” Gilly answers and Sam nods. Little Sam sits on the countertop between them and kicks his tiny legs.

“We ready for this?” Meera asks to no one in particular.

Sansa knows the Harrenhal employees are dying to see it. She's never sure how much Jon and Sam and Gilly have told them, but they know it's _something_. Wyn has asked her a million questions and she's tried to answer the best she can, but honestly, she barely remembers. Oh, she remembers the little things – the slamming door, the knocking. What she has trouble remembering were _those_ nights. The nights Alys had her. They're hazy dreams at best.

Even Jeyne seems interested. In the year now that Sansa's been coming to Harrenhal, she and Jeyne have gotten close. It's strange, Jeyne isn't the person she thought she'd get along with the best, but here they are. She's even joined Jeyne's book club along with Gilly, much to Jon's dismay ( _I barely get to see you as it is, now I lose you for two hours to a book club?_ )

* * *

There'd been a time where it almost fell apart.

In the weeks after filming wrapped, everything had felt so strange. The first few times she'd visited Jon after, they'd barely left his bed, much less his cabin. It hadn't felt strange then, they'd been so wrapped up in each other. But the first time they'd tried to do something _normal_ , it had felt a little awkward. No show looming, no one waiting for them back at the inn, no ghost hanging over their heads. Just them, trying to figure out how to be _them_.

Then the holidays had started and Sansa had decided she was too busy to make the trek to Harrenhal (she had refused, at the time, to admit she was avoiding it _and_ Jon). Thankfully Arya had little patience for her nonsense. It was Arya and Gendry who, in early January, shoved her into the back of Gendry's van, drove to Harrenhal, and practically dumped her on Jon's doorstep.

It hasn't been smooth, but here they are, nearly a year later. They're different people, her and Jon, but she thinks that's why they work. He's there to calm her down when she stresses out, when she feels out of control and high strung. She's there to cheer him up when he becomes sullen and withdrawn.

He likes her family and her family likes him (well, all except Pops, maybe. The first time Jon had come to Riverrun to meet her grandparents, Pops had _a lot_ to say – the length of Jon's hair, their nearly six year age difference, pretty much everything about Jon Pops didn't like. It had only been later, after she was in near tears in the kitchen, that Nana had reassured her that Pops had _hated_ Ned; reminded her that Pops still gives Meera and Gendry a hard time because no one is ever going to be good enough for his kids).

And she likes Jon's family – well, the family he's chosen. She loves Sam and Gilly and Little Sam, she loves the staff of Harrenhal and she thinks they've definitely warmed up to her, despite the shaky start.

It's all going so well, she's not sure she wants to watch the show, because what if that brings up old issues, what if it changes things? She likes how they are now.

* * *

There's been no sign of Alys.

Jon hadn't told her, but she found out that he goes up to the attic and checks on the window now and then. She had to hear it from Sam and when she confronted Jon about it, he'd said he didn't want to worry her. To calm his nerves, she'd made them stay a night in her old east wing room, just to prove that nothing would happen.

“She's gone,” she had said as morning sunlight had crept into the room. “It's been months, she's gone.”

Gone and hopefully at peace, she'd thought.

* * *

Brienne arrives for the weekend and Sansa gives her a big hug and is surprised when Brienne hugs her back just as forcefully. They've kept in touch – not a lot, a few emails here and there, meeting up for lunch the one time she and Jon had gone to King's Landing.

“Is Pod bringing your things in?” she asks when she realizes Brienne doesn't have any luggage, not even an overnight bag.

“No, he's coming in his own car, like an adult,” Brienne's face barely moves but Sansa can sense the smile in her eyes. “My husband is bringing in the bags.”

“Sure, sure, leave it to me,” a strangely familiar voice drawls from behind Brienne and... _oh_.

“Jaime Lannister,” she breathes and she can _feel_ her eyes going wide.

She _knows_ Brienne and Jaime are married, it's something she found out a few months ago and had been delighted by, but she never imagined she'd actually _meet_ _Jaime Lannister_.

“Jon!” she calls as Jaime gives her a megawatt smile and extends his hand for her to shake.

“Sans, you don't have to yell, I'm just... _oh_.” Jon stops dead in his tracks and she reaches out and drags him closer.

“We're huge fans!” she exclaims and then feels herself blush furiously. He's just a _person_ , and Brienne's husband at that!

Brienne rolls her eyes with a groan. “This is why I don't bring you places,” she tells Jaime, who doesn't look put off by Brienne or Sansa's behavior.

“Fans, eh?” he grins instead, looking pleased with himself. “Do you have something you'd like me to sign? _Anything_ for a fan.”

Brienne is gagging at this point and Sansa would laugh if she weren't so starstruck (next to her, she thinks Jon might be even _more_ starstruck than she is, which is interesting).

“We watch _The Fool_ all the time,” she continues on, like she can't help the words that spill out of her mouth, though her brain is screaming at her to stop and treat him like a regular person.

“The Fool!” Jaime's charming celebrity mask slips and he looks genuinely happy. “I think that's my favorite, though it doesn't nearly get the credit it deserves.”

“Don't hype him up too much,” Tyrion appears next to his brother with an eye roll that nearly matches Brienne's. “Do you know how long it takes to dismantle his ego after he meets fans?”

Brienne groans and Jaime shoots them all a grin as the two of them walk off towards the check in counter (Sansa watches Wyn fumble with their room key and turn bright red).

* * *

They've set up a large projector and screen on the back lawn, Jon and Gendry and Wyn had spent a good portion of the morning pulling any non-antique couch outside for some people to sit on, the rest of them spreading blankets on the ground for everyone else. Sansa isn't sure how a small private screening has turned into _this_ , but it had. She partially blames Tyrion's theatrical side, partially her own family (inviting anyone and everyone they could think of), and she partially blames the town.

There are dozens of them promising to show up today. She's found, over the past year, that the town loves Jon, though he refuses to see it. They love Jon and Gilly and Sam and Harrenhal, they love the tourism it's rekindled. Sansa understands, it's easy to love them (it's easy to love _him_ though again, he refuses to see it).

She's nervous to have the town watch, though - to have all her new friends watch, to have Rickon and Nana and Pops watch. She could handle it if it were just industry people, she thinks. If it were just industry people and the ten of them that were here for it. She doesn't know what they're going to show (Tyrion has kept quiet about most of it, giddily telling them they'll just have to _wait and see_ ).

They're all standing around outside, waiting to greet guests. When Melisandre shows up in her sleek red dress and giant sunglasses, Bran leans over and whispers “there goes our theory she's a vampire.”

Rickon and her grandparents arrive, and Sansa realizes just how nervous she is about family being here and she instantly regrets the _other_ person she invited.

She's not sure why she did it, it had just... happened. She and Jon had been cleaning out his old trunk, going through all the things he'd forgotten or been ignoring over the years; paperwork he hadn't looked at since his mother died. Inside the trunk had been a small card, the type that comes attached to a flower delivery. It had come from Dany and she'd tracked the address down and sent a letter inviting her here.

She hadn't told Jon and now she wishes desperately that she had. At the time, she hadn't wanted to give him a reason to say no like she knows he would ( _Essos is so far, it's been too long, we barely know each other anymore)_. But she knows he misses Dany. Whenever he talks about her, he gets this fond smile and she _knows_ he misses her, he just won't let himself admit it.

So when she sees a taxi pull up and a blonde woman around Jon's age with a ten year old son gets out, she feels her heart flip.

“Jon,” she whispers, tugging him away from Sam for a moment. “I'm sorry, I need you to not be mad at me, I was...”

He's confused at her words until he sees the new arrivals and for a moment his entire body goes rigid and she wonders how angry he is. But then Dany turns and sees him. She waves and says something to the dark haired boy with her and points at Jon and something _breaks._ Jon moves forward, unsteadily, like he's seen a ghost (and maybe he has; if there's one thing she's learned, it's that there are infinite ways to be haunted).

“Dany,” his voice is gruff and she gives him a tentative smile.

“I'm going to assume you didn't know I was coming.” Her accent is strange – Sansa knows she grew up on Dragonstone, but over a decade over in Pentos has given it an Essosi flair.

“I... no, I didn't.” Jon seems at a loss for words and his eyes settle on the boy.

“This is Rhaego,” she says with a hand on the boy's head. “Rhaego, this is Jon. I've told you about Jon.”

The boy nods eagerly and says “mom said you were a Ranger! That's so cool.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jon clears his throat and shifts awkwardly. “I was, a long time ago. Right around when you were born.”

There's a few moments of awkward silence after, and Sansa finally cuts in. “Why don't we get you settled in your room? Hi, I'm Sansa.”

“Good to finally meet you,” Dany says with a quirk of her eyebrow and Sansa can feel her face heat up. Ok, yes, she shouldn't have kept it a secret but she finds she's not totally sorry. Despite their hesitation, despite the awkwardness, there's a small smile on Dany's face and Sansa has known Jon long enough to know that his expression is stony only because there's so many other people around and he hates public displays of emotion.

“I'll get your bags,” his voice is rough and he moves forward and takes the two bags that they had set on the ground.

Sansa leads them inside and tries to give a tour as they go. She's been learning the history and the architecture of the inn and she thinks she's getting good at this tour thing. Dany listens politely and behind them, she can hear Rhaego peppering Jon with excited questions. She gets the key from Wyn and leads them up to the room herself and lets them inside, where Jon deposits the bags.

There's another bout of tense silence before Jon moves forward and wraps Dany in a hug and it makes Sansa want to cry, but she forces herself not to because this isn't about _her_.

She finds herself offering to take Rhaego to get something to eat, to which Dany agrees, and so she takes the boy to the kitchens and gives him a snack. Then she takes him to the games room and they play Go Fish for a while until she gets a text from Jon telling her he and Dany are done talking.

When she takes Rhaego back to Dany's room, Jon is waiting for her, his eyes red-rimmed and face a little pale. Dany also looks like she's been crying and she assures Rhaego that she's ok when he asks what's wrong.

“Nothing's wrong,” Dany says and looks up at Jon. _“Nothing.”_

* * *

The apologies flood out of her the minute they're alone, down the hall and pulled off into one of the small alcoves.

“A little warning would've been nice,” Jon sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Just... a warning.”

“I thought you'd say no or make some excuse,” she picks at her cuticles to have something to do. “I... I realized too late it was a bad idea.”

He's quiet for a moment, staring at the wall like he doesn't even see it.

“Not a bad idea,” he says finally. “Just... a little shaky in the execution.”

* * *

When they all find places to sit on the back lawn, her nerves really start.

There are tables set up along the side with food and drinks, everyone they've invited seems to be having a good time. It's strange to watch Pops talk to a few of the men from town, to watch Arya and Wyn laugh together over something on Arya's phone, to watch Brienne and Jarl debating which brand of beer is the best. Her and Jon's worlds seem to be colliding and it feels slightly unreal.

Tyrion stands in front of the group and holds up his hand for silence as they all settle down.

“Now, what we're about to watch is a condensed version. Obviously this is a TV show, so the whole thing is about ten hours long. This is a rough cut - we've taken out all the narration, the history lessons, the establishing shots, the introductions. It's still a marathon, so buckle in. We'll take a break after each 'episode'. Grab some food, get drunk, and _enjoy_.”

“You ready for this?” Arya leans over from her own blanket to whisper.

“Not at all,” she whispers back as the video starts.

* * *

She forgot what it was like to watch herself on screen. She forgot how it felt to judge herself – how pale she is, especially in night vision, how she looks terrible from certain angles, how shrill her voice is.

What shocks her, though, what takes her breath away, is that the show is barely a ghost story. It starts that way, it's set up that way, but she notices very quickly that most of it, the focus of it, are her and Jon. Their initial hesitant interactions, the stiff awkwardness.

It was so easy to forget that the cameras were always around. She watches as past-her sits on the porch in the early mornings while Jon walks Ghost, how they waved at each other, tentative and searching. She watches things she hadn't even remembered; moments where they crossed paths, a shy smile, a quick nod. She watches him make her and Ayra and Gendry breakfast at midnight. She watches how, over time, they stand closer and closer to each other, how they start to find little ways to touch each other.

She watches her interactions with Arya and Bran, how they comfort each other, how they bicker and laugh together. She watches Bran and Meera be the calm antithesis to Arya and Gendry's hurricane. She watches Sam and Gilly play with Little Sam, their domesticity breathing joy into any shot they're in. She watches Brienne chastise Pod and try to hide a smile from him as she does so. She watches all of them form a bond she still feels to this day.

She watches herself fall in love.

Slowly, surely, steadily. She hadn't even realized it was happening at the time, but looking back, it's so obvious; no wonder no one had seemed overly surprised when they kissed. And when the kiss happens on screen, she can't help but feel the same bubbling excitement she had that night, and a murmur sweeps through the assembled watchers. They all know she and Jon are together, but when she looks around, they all seem captivated, and when the slamming door comes, quite a few of them jump.

Time seems to fly by as she watches; she's entranced by the story that is hers, but also _isn't._ Because they've edited it, they've taken out quite a bit and somehow added things that hadn't even happened. The night she goes up to the attic, they cut right after she wakes out of her trance and runs to the door – they make it look like she simply opened it and left. They cut out the entire conversation on the walkies, they cut out Gendry kicking the door in and her frantic rush to get outside.

They make the revelation that it's Alys seem much more dramatic than it had been. She thinks they've even edited the painting of Aemond Rivers to look more like Jon, though she's having trouble recalling what the painting actually did look like.

And the séance – _that_ they've changed most of all. Sansa barely remembers that night, but she knows enough to know that it didn't happen like it does on screen. They seem to have spliced in audio of the others from other nights, from different days. When she risks a look a Jon, he seems confused and she knows she's right. This isn't how it happened at all – they take out any indication that Sansa had been possessed (she hates the word, but it's the one she and the others have decided to use, because it feels the most accurate to what happened). They make it seem like they simply talk to the empty air and settle Alys's restless spirit.

It takes hours to get through, with people getting up for food and bathroom breaks, with people coming and going (mostly people from town who had businesses to get back to), but she and Jon and the others who had _been there_ , they barely move.

After it's done, everyone claps and she can hear the people who weren't there beginning to ask questions, to discuss what was real and what they think was faked, ways to explain away things like the slamming door. She gets up and walks inside to the kitchen and she feels Jon follow her. She isn't surprised to see the others have, too.

They all stand around the kitchen island; her, Jon, Bran, Arya, Meera, Gendry, Sam, Gilly, Brienne, Pod. There's silence for a while as they all seem to process what they'd seen.

“That wasn't how it happened,” Bran finally says, though he doesn't sound angry.

“No,” Tyrion's voice cuts in and when she turns around, he's standing in the doorway. There's no smug smile, no laughter. “No, it wasn't what happened, but we made it more palatable,” he shrugs and steps fully into the kitchen.

“No one's going to believe it,” Pod's voice is strained. “Even edited down...”

“They'll think you're actors,” Tyrion confirms. “They'll think you faked it. Of course, some will believe. You almost have _me_ believing. But either way, I don't think it's going to matter much. No one's really going to care if the ghosts were real or not.”

“But it was barely about the ghosts,” Jon's voice is also strained, incredulous. They all know that what he really means is _it was focused on us_.

“Because it wasn't,” Tyrion says, thoughtful now. “We told the story that needed to be told. Sure, we could've made it some big to-do. Made it spooky. Edited in more shots of things moving. Edited Alys to look vengeful or made it a different ghost entirely. Hell, we could've filled that attic to the brim with ghosts. But in the end, that's not what people want, not really. What people want is humanity, and as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing more human than family. Than love.”

* * *

Later that night after everyone has settled; she lays in bed with Jon and _thinks_. Next to her, she can feel Jon thinking, too.

They hadn't gotten to the other thing they meant to do this weekend – announce that Sansa will be moving here to Harrenhal. They've been planning it for a while and it felt like this was the best time to announce it, when everyone who needed to know would be in one place. But they hadn't even gotten to it, so shaken up by the show. The story that was theirs but also wasn't.

“Do you want to change anything?” she finally asks. “We have veto power, remember? I know Bran and Arya and even Brienne will back us up. Do you want to make them change it?”

He's silent for a moment before she sees his mouth tip up in a smile, just a bit. “No. No, I don't want to change any of it.”

“Me neither,” she whispers and turns to bury her face into his shoulder.

No, she wouldn't change any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone who's stuck around this long, everyone who's read and commented and left kudos. I appreciate you all more than you know. 
> 
> Happy Halloween you ghouls.


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